Bronzino, Politics and Portraiture in 1530s

Julia Alexandra Siemon

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015

©2015 Julia Alexandra Siemon All rights reserved

ABSTRACT

Bronzino, Politics and Portraiture in 1530s Florence

Julia Alexandra Siemon

This dissertation examines by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino, and by his teacher, Jacopo . It takes as its focus works created during the period of 1529-39, a decade of political uncertainty and social unrest predating Bronzino’s career as court painter.

The study begins during the brutal Siege of Florence in 1529-30, which brought an end to the last

Florentine republic. Although the republic’s defeat made way for the establishment of the

Medici duchy, the 1530s were marked by fervent and unrelenting republican opposition to the new dukes. These circumstances provide the background to this study, in which paintings by

Bronzino and Pontormo are shown to offer eloquent—if sometimes cautious—comment on recent political events.

The initial chapters address the relationship between two paintings carried out during the

Siege, reconciling Pontormo’s (Francesco Guardi) with its allegorical cover, Bronzino’s and . The first chapter reconsiders the role of Venus in

Bronzino’s , attributing to her a rousing, rather than pacifying, influence; she is shown to be a deity especially well-suited for reverence by young Florentine soldiers, and a fitting subject for the cover of Pontormo’s republican portrait. The second chapter explores the specific political significance of Bronzino’s artistic choices, paying special attention to his allusion to

Michelangelo’s marble , whose form he incorporates into the figure of Pygmalion’s beloved Galatea. The young hero David—shown to be one of the period’s most potent republican symbols—is somehow manifest in each of the paintings considered, linking the four chapters.

But whereas the Pygmalion and Galatea and Portrait of a Halberdier are explained as republican pictures created under republican rule, the portraits examined in the third and fourth chapters are presented as subversive images created under the Medici dukes. The third chapter reinterprets Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (c. 1537), as an expression of republican opposition to ducal rule. The fourth chapter proposes a new dating for Pontormo’s Portrait of

Carlo Neroni—presently understood as a republican picture dating to the period of the Siege— relocating its origin to c. 1538-9, well after the republic’s defeat. This reassessment has important implications for a number of portraits by both artists, and it calls into question currently accepted art-historical approaches to Florentine culture in the 1530s. By identifying examples of republican factionalism in portraits painted by Pontormo and Bronzino under

Medici rule, this dissertation discovers political dissent where previously considered impossible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv

DEDICATION ...... vi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER ONE: An Encounter at Dawn ...... 26

CHAPTER TWO: Flesh and Stone...... 65

CHAPTER THREE: Painting David in the City of Goliath ...... 101

CHAPTER FOUR: A More Audacious Portrait ...... 155

CONCLUSION ...... 190

ILLUSTRATIONS ...... 197

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 229

i

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES CHAPTER I 1.1: Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1529-30. Oil on panel, Galleria degli . 1.2: Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi), c.1529-30. Oil on panel, transferred to canvas, J. Paul Getty Museum. 1.3: Pontormo, Study for St. Francis, c.1518-21. Black chalk heightened with white, Galleria degli Uffizi [6744F recto]. 1.4: Pontormo, Venus and Cupid, c. 1515. Red chalk. Galleria degli Uffizi [341F]. 1.5: Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Mars, and Cupid, c. 1505. Oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie, . 1.6: Marco Zoppo, Venus Victrix, c. 1465-74(?). Pen, brown ink on vellum, British Museum. 1.7: Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, details. 1.8: Dante, (Paradiso VIII). Fourteenth-century manuscript illumination with Dante and Beatrice conversing, Venus, Taurus, and Libra. Bodleian Library. 1.9: Angelo , Stanze di messer Angelo Poliziano incominciate per le giostre di Giuliano de’ Medici, anonymous woodcut illustration. Florentine edition, 1494. (Reprinted in Dempsey, “Portraits and Masks,” 36.) 1.10: , Jacopo Pesaro being presented by Alexander VI to Saint Peter, c.1503-12. Oil on canvas, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

CHAPTER II 2.1: Michelangelo, David (with image flipped on vertical axis), c. 1504. Marble, Florence, Accademia 2.2: , David, c. 1408-9. Marble, Florence, . 2.3: Donatello, David, c. 1435-40. Bronze, Florence, Bargello. 2.4: Copy after Michelangelo, David, in position in front of the Palazzo della . 2.5: Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (?), Portrait of a , c. 1510. Oil on panel, London. 2.6: Vasari, Procession of through the in 1515, 1558-62. Fresco, Sala di Leone X, . 2.7: Vasari, Reception of the Insignia of Command, 1558-62. Fresco, Sala di Leone X, Palazzo Vecchio. 2.8: , Piazza del Mercato Vecchio. Fresco, Palazzo Vecchio, c.1562-72. 2.9: , Primavera, c.1478. Tempera on panel, Uffizi. 2.10: (after Niccolò Tribolo), Venus-Fiorenza , c.1560-70. Florence, . 2.11: Bronzino, Primavera (Venus-Fiorenza), 1545-6. , . 2.12: Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Young Man, c.1545. Oil on panel, St. Louis Art Museum.

ii

CHAPTER III 3.1: Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, c. 1537. Oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. 3.2: Antonio Rossellino(?) David, c.1461/79. Marble, National Gallery of Art, Washington. 3.3: Bronzino, Ugolino Martelli, detail. 3.4: Bronzino, Allegorical Portrait of Dante, 1532-3. Oil on canvas, private collection. 3.5: Bronzino, Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, 1527-8 or 1532-4. Oil on panel. , Sforzesco. 3.6: Hans Burgkmair, Genealogy of Maximilian I (Hector), 1509-12. Woodcut. 3.7: Michelangelo, Brutus, c. 1539. Marble, Museo del Bargello.

CHAPTER IV 4.1: Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni), c. 1529-30/ 1538-9. Oil on panel, London, National Gallery. 4.2 Violante Vanni, after Lorenzo Lorenzi, Portrait of a Young Man. In Raccolta di ottanta Stampe rappresentanti i Quadri più scelte de’ Signori Marchesi Gerini, 1759. 4.3: Comparison: Pontormo, Portrait of Carlo Neroni and Portrait of Francesco Guardi. 4.4: Comparison: Michelangelo, David and Pontormo, Portrait of Carlo Neroni. 4.5: Comparison: Bronzino, Portrait of , c. 1558. Oil on panel, Palazzo Vecchio, and Bronzino, Dante, c. 1532. Black chalk, Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung. 4.6: Pontormo, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand. 1529-30. Oil on panel, Palazzo Pitti. 4.7: Bronzino, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand (and detail), 1529-3. Oil on panel, Uffizi. 4.8: Pontormo, Portrait of a Bishop (Giovanni della Casa? Niccolò Ardinghelli?), c. 1541-2. Oil on panel, National Gallery, Washington. 4.9: Pontormo, Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book, c. 1542. Oil on panel, private collection. 4.10: Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, c.1534-8. Oil on panel, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 4.11: Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in Black, c.1538. Oil or oil and tempera on panel. Formerly in the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection, sold Christie’s, 29 January 2014. 4.12: Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, c. 1534-38. Oil on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Underdrawing and underpainting in infrared reflectography (Infrared reflectogram, Sherman Fairchild Conservation Center, MMA. In Bambach, ed. Bronzino, 44.)

CONCLUSION 5.1: Pontormo, Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, 1534-5. Oil on panel, Philadelphia Museum of Art. 5.2: Vasari, Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, 1534. Oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi.

CHARTS I: Bronzino, c. 1527-37. II: Pontormo and Bronzino, c. 1529-39 III: Pontormo, c. 1525-30. IV: Pontormo c. 1538-42.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation exists because of Professor David Rosand. It was a great privilege to have him as my graduate advisor, and his loss brings a melancholy note to the project’s end. Professor Rosand’s remarkable skill as a teacher is attested to by the vibrant community of scholars whose careers he shaped; I am deeply grateful to him for choosing me to be among them, and to them for their support and encouragement, both before and after his loss. I am very thankful to Professors Michael Cole and David Freedberg for generously stepping in as my co-advisors. Their help, however, has not been limited to the project’s final stages. For several years, Professor Cole has been my most important interlocutor. He has a keen eye and expansive knowledge of Florentine art, and his incisive criticism has always steered me in the right direction. With patient attention, he challenges me to do better work. Professor Freedberg introduced me to the discipline of Art History. In my first semester at Columbia, I was lucky enough to have him as my professor for the graduate proseminar, perhaps the single most influential class of my career as a student. He, together with Professor Rosand, helped shaped the way I see the world. Later, as his research assistant, I came to look on Professor Freedberg as a mentor—he continues to be my best advocate in all things art historical. I am very grateful for the thoughtful responses to my work offered by Professors Cole and Freedberg, Professor William Connell, Professor Diane Bodart, and Dr. Elizabeth Cropper during my dissertation defense. Gracious support from the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University has made this project possible. My interest in Bronzino’s portraits was first sparked at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, in front of the Ugolino Martelli. That trip was sponsored by a grant from the Department, one of several that would fund travel all over to see and study art. In later years, a Rudolf Wittkower Fellowship allowed me to spend many months in Florentine archives, and a C.V. Starr Fellowship granted me time to write, free from teaching responsibilities. Two outside fellowships gave me the luxury to spend extended time in Florence, refining the project. As a Predoctoral Fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, I had access to literary material, and the time to read it. I was meanwhile thrust into a vibrant community of scholars who offered friendly and insightful feedback on my work. As a Samuel H. Kress Fellow at the Medici Archive Project, I was able to return to the Archivio di Stato with a much sharper focus, guided by the peerless expertise of Alessio Assonitis. The final months of work on this dissertation were carried out in time borrowed from my position in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have been overwhelmed by the support shown me by my colleagues. It is a privilege to work with Luke Syson, Ellenor Alcorn, Denise Allen, Wolfram Koeppe, and the many others who have welcomed me to ESDA. Erin Pick, Sarah Mallory, and Helen Wyld first taught me the ropes, and then offered tireless encouragement. Ellenor, in particular, has shown

iv me astounding kindness and patience during difficult moments, giving me room to finish my dissertation while also offering new material to inspire me. Many friends have read and discussed the dissertation with me. Jessica Maratsos probably knows every word. Having a close friend writing a tandem dissertation on Pontormo made a difficult task much easier. Stuart Lingo and Antonio Geremicca read large portions of the text, offering extremely useful specialist feedback. Anna Moody and Jim Siemon were tireless editors, responding to multiple drafts. Niccolò Capponi lent me his copies of von Albertini, Spini, and Diaz, changing the course of my work. Maria Ruvoldt was an unfailing source of excellent advice. Frederick Ilchman coached me through preparing for the defense. Aimee Ng, Olivia Powell, Patrick Crowley, Emerson Bowyer, Carolyn Yerkes, Drew Sawyer, Emily Beeny, Irina Tolstoy, Alessandra di Croce, and Lorenzo Buonanno all listened to conference papers and argued the virtues of different approaches over dinner. Emily Hayman hashed out problems during long-distance runs, and Leah Sabin always visited me in Florence. Jon Kitei, Shona Glink, Laura Nolan and Gerry Moody provided warm meals and sanity. Rachel Nolan, Anna Moody, and Sophie Brickman were my loudest cheerleaders. My sisters, Anna, Rosalie, and Johanna set a high bar. Our parents, Jim and Alexandra, taught us that anything is possible. To them, I am the most grateful.

v

For my parents.

In memory of Professor David Rosand.

vi

INTRODUCTION

In September of 1558, a Florentine courtier addressed a spiteful letter to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. The author was the well-known academician Luca Martini, the object of his asperity, a fellow scholar and former friend. “Ugolino Martelli,” writes Martini, “deserves to be punished and chastised.”1 The censure is political: Martini advises Duke Cosimo to reject any attempt by

Ugolino to lessen the constraints of his—Ugolino’s—exile. The letter cites, along with

Ugolino’s “tanti difetti” (his many personal defects), Ugolino’s long service to the most persistent enemies of the Duke.2

The target of this criticism appears in Agnolo Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli.3

Painted in c. 1537, the portrait predates the young man’s exile and notoriety, and interpretations of the image’s dense symbolic material have not taken into account his anti-Medicean loyalties.4

1 Luca Martini to Duke Cosimo I in Archivio di Stato di Firenze [ASF], Mediceo del Principato 473A, cc. 552r-553r: “Questo giorno ho avuto di Roma una lettera da messer Ugolino di Luigi Martelli, la quale mando a vostra eccellenza illustrissima con la presente, che essendo egli stato, secondo che ne ho inteso al servizio delli Strozzi e della seta spiacente a Dio e a’ nemici suoi, non solo non debbo accettare sue lettere, ma non sentirne ragionare se non per nuocerli, anzi, per dir meglio, per gastigarlo in parte de’ tanti suoi difetti ch’a sì gran torto al fine di se stesso ha commessi… ”; For comment, see Vanni Bramanti, "Ritratto di Ugolino Martelli (1519-1592),” Schede umanistiche: rivista semestrale dell' Archivio Umanistico Rinascimentale Bolognese 2 (1999): 5-54, 12, 39; Bramanti, Ugolino Martelli, Lettere a Pier Vettori 1536-1577 (Rome: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2009), 23.

2 Martini, ibid.

3 Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

4 The single exception is Antonio Geremicca’s excellent new volume, Bronzino: La dotta penna al pennel dotto pari (Rome: Universitalia, 2013). Geremicca does not attempt a comprehensive 1

Nevertheless, in Bronzino’s portrait, Ugolino warily displays precisely those political sympathies that will later inspire condemnation from the ducal government.

In this dissertation, the Ugolino Martelli is examined together with two other paintings— one by Bronzino, and the other by his teacher, Pontormo—and republican interpretations proposed for each.5 The discovery of subversive sentiment in a portrait by Bronzino challenges the artist’s modern reputation, which centers on his role as court painter to the Medici; many of

Bronzino’s best-known works are portraits of the ducal family or paintings commissioned by its members.6 Yet Bronzino completed a number of paintings—like the Ugolino Martelli—before the start of his association with Duke Cosimo’s court. As the focus of this study, these works will be shown to respond to an altogether different political atmosphere. This reassessment has important implications for a number of portraits in Bronzino’s early oeuvre, and it calls into question currently accepted art-historical approaches to Florentine culture in the 1530s.

analysis of the painting’s symbolic elements, but his attention to Ugolino’s biography leads him to propose a republican reading that aligns with my own.

5 For clarification of the term “republic” as used here, the explanation given by Felix Gilbert is helpful: “‘republic’ or ‘republican regime’ in Florence refers to the political system existing in Florence between 1494 and 1512; a few references to the ‘renewed republic [or second/last republic]’ refer to the Florentine government from 1527 to 1530. Formally, Florence was a republic also under the Medici between 1434 and 1494 and between 1512 and 1527, but the Florentines drew a sharp distinction between a government system existing under the Medici and the ‘free governments’ (governo libero) of 1494 to 1512 and of 1527 to 1530. Thus it seems appropriate to reserve the term ‘republic’ for the periods of ‘free government.’” Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: politics and history in sixteenth-century Florence (New York: Norton, 1984), ix.

6 In 2010-11, the first monographic exhibition of Bronzino’s paintings, curated by Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, was held at the in Florence. Though concerned with the entirety of the painter’s career, the show’s title (“Bronzino, Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici”) highlights the dominant role played by Bronzino’s Medicean patronage in shaping his modern reputation.

2

Bronzino’s relationship with Cosimo and his wife Eleonora di Toledo began only in 1539, on the occasion of their marriage. According to , Bronzino first caught the attention of his most celebrated patrons through the production of decorative ephemera for the wedding.7 Born in 1503, the painter was already thirty-six years old at the start of his close association with the Medici.8 Before that time, Bronzino painted a number of elegant portraits of the city’s young men, finely but soberly dressed, often in compositions designed to accentuate their Florentine identity. These images’ emphasis upon Florence’s artistic and literary patrimony has been interpreted as a display of dispassionate political complacency, expedient in a period of social unrest. For portraits created in the 1530s, however, this approach neglects the period’s history of active political dissent. A reconsideration of the Ugolino Martelli, in conjunction with

Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea and Pontormo’s Carlo Neroni, suggests that, instead,

Bronzino’s early portraits employ artistic and literary references to the past (whether ancient, mythological, biblical, or Tuscan) as a means to safely express partisan feeling in an uncertain

Florentine present.

For this project, Cosimo and Eleonora’s wedding is doubly significant. Besides providing the painter’s introduction to his most famous patrons, the lavish celebration also marked the city’s first progress towards cultural recovery following the defeat of the last republic, ten years earlier: Bronzino’s paintings from the 1530s originate in a decade characterized by

7 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori…, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 7 (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1881), 596.

8 Elizabeth Pilliod has made it clear that in the 1530s it is Pontormo, and not Bronzino, who can be seen in any capacity as state artist for the dukes. Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori: A Genealogy of Florentine Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

3 violence and economic depression.9 An approach that fails to distinguish between the paintings carried out before 1539 and the rest of Bronzino’s career necessarily limits our understanding of the earlier works, and leaves them susceptible to anachronistic interpretation.

The fourth decade of the Florentine cinquecento began in devastation. At the end of the

1520s, the Medici were expelled from Florence and the city was converted into a republic, with

Christ declared its one true sovereign. Not long after, in October of 1529, this last republic came under siege: for ten brutal months, foreign armies, allied in support of the Medicean cause, battered and starved the city. The republic surrendered the following August, making way for the establishment of the Medici duchy.10 Ushered in by fervent republican idealism, the decade ended in imperial splendor.11

The Siege and the ducal wedding: these events form discrete ideological parentheses, framing ten years of political instability and social discord—a decade whose complexity confutes the seeming rapidity of the city’s transformation from republic into principate. This dissertation presents paintings whose origin falls within this period as examples of art made in the context of

9 Giorgio Spini, Cosimo I e l’indipendenza del principato mediceo, 2nd. ed. (Florence: Vallecchi, 1980, 136. Spini also writes that it is only from 1539 onward that the court of the Medici began to be a center of intellectual and artistic life (70). It is important to note, however, that the first years of Cosimo’s rule were still characterized by instability and turmoil. The wedding, as Furio Diaz writes, was only one of several small successes forming part of Cosimo’s gradual consolidation of power. It was not until 1543 that the Duke was able to gain control over the city’s fortresses (held by Imperial forces), and only in the mid 1550s did Cosimo finally win decisive victory over rebellious Siena. Furio Diaz, Il Granducato di Firenze, I Medici (Turin: UTET, 1976), 72.

10 Modern histories of the republic and Siege include Cecil Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 1527-1530 (London: Methuen, 1925), and J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512-1530 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983).

11 For the wedding, see Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell, A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1968).

4 uncertain change. Unlike his works of the ‘40s and beyond, Bronzino’s paintings of the 1530s belong to a reality in which a future of Florentine hegemony was by no means guaranteed, and in which republican culture thrived in defiant, if sometimes furtive, manifestations. Restricting attention to the decade ending in 1539 isolates the works from the rest of Bronzino’s career—a useful strategy when considering a political narrative inconsistent with his later service to the

Duke.

II.

While this project’s focus is deliberately limited, its conclusions depend upon a broad view of Florentine history. Any attempt to address the political situation in Florence during the

1530s would be incomplete absent consideration of the city’s past relationships with republicanism and Medici rule. Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilization of the Renaissance in alludes to the formidable nature of such a task. Burckhardt grandly praises Benedetto Varchi’s

Storia fiorentina, a sixteenth-century history that provides intricate analysis of the “rule of the nobility, the tyrannies, the struggles of the middle class with the proletariat, limited and unlimited democracy, pseudo-democracy, the primacy of a single house, the theocracy of

Savonarola, and the mixed forms of government which prepared the way for the Medicean despotism.”12 These twists and turns provide the background to this study, which relies on modern political histories written by such scholars as, for example, J.N. Stephens, Nicolai

Rubinstein, J.R. Hale, John M. Najemy, Lorenzo Polizotto, Richard Goldthwaite, Alison Brown,

12 Jacob Burckhardt. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Mineola, New York: Dover, 2010), 52.

5 and many others. The following paragraphs offer a very brief overview of the hundred years leading up to Siege of Florence, at which point this dissertation begins.13

The rise of the Medici to political dominance over the Florentine republic began in 1434, with the return of the family from exile and the elevation of Cosimo the Elder to the position of gran maestro. Cosimo’s personal ascent coincided with the elevation of the Medici to a position of power over the delicately balanced oligarchy, beyond that of other clans also in possession of great wealth. Through manipulation and financial influence, the family exerted unbalanced control over the ostensibly republican government. This authority survived multiple failed uprisings, and was maintained and augmented in the latter half of the century by Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo (“The Magnificent”). Lorenzo’s rule remains famous as the Renaissance moment par excellence, in which he presided over an elite collection of intellectuals, musicians, poets, philosophers and artists in his Platonic Academy.14

13 For a broad treatment, see, for example, John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200-1575 (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006) and Gene A. Brucker, Renaissance Florence (U of California Press, 1969). On the Medici, see Arnaldo d’Addario, La formazione dello stato modern in Toscana: Da Cosimo Vecchio a Cosimo I de’ Medici (Lecce: Adriatica, 1976), Christopher Hibbert, The : Its Rise and Fall (New York: Morrow, 1999), and J.R. Hale, Florence and the Medici: the Pattern of Control (Plymouth: Latimer Trend, 1977). On the family in the fifteenth century, see Dale V. Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434 (Oxford UP, 1978); Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore: JHUP, 1980); Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434 to 1494) 2nd edition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); Alison Brown, The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power (Florence: Olschki, 1992); Idem, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). On Florentine politics in the early sixteenth century, see H.C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth Century Florence, 1502-1519 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985). For Stephens, see note 10 above. For Savonarola, see Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Moment in Florence, 1494-1545 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di 2 vols. (Florence: Giuntina, 1952), and Lauro Martines, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006).

14 On the academy and its legacy, see James Hankins, “The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly, 44 (Autumn, 1991): 429-475. 6

A period of social and political turmoil followed Lorenzo’s death in 1492. His incompetent son Piero governed the city for only two years before the 1494 invasion of the

French king Charles VIII, and the ousting of the Medici. The end of the century saw the city cowed by the religious extremism of Girolamo Savonarola. The Florentines soon wavered in their support for the priest’s brand of intolerant austerity, and Savonarola’s control ended in the spectacle of his execution in front of the seat of the republican government, the Palazzo della

Signoria. The republic again changed shape with the 1502 inauguration of Piero Soderini as the city’s Standard Bearer for life.

In 1512, the nearly twenty-year hiatus from Medicean control came to an end. Giovanni de’ Medici (first as Cardinal, and then—following the 1513 death of Julius II—as Pope Leo X) helped his family regain dominance over the city. As in the previous century, plots to overthrow the hereditary government repeatedly challenged Medicean rule. In 1527, one of these attempts was successful: Florentine republicans took advantage of the disarray following the Sack of

Rome, establishing the last Florentine republic. Shortly thereafter, in October of 1529, the imperial and papal troops began their attack on the city, which gave way in August of 1530.

Florence would never again be a republic. Still, when addressing apparent political sentiment in works of art produced in the 1530s, the past changeability in Florentine power should be remembered. The previous century’s frequent shifts in government help explain the persistence of anti-Medicean sentiment in the decade beginning with the Siege, and the presence of republican imagery in works created after the last republic’s fall.

III.

The arrangement of the following chapters is largely chronological, beginning with the period of the Siege. The first and second chapters consider Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea,

7 painted as a cover to accompany a portrait by Bronzino’s teacher, Pontormo.15 That portrait, described by Vasari as depicting a young republican guardsman, is understood in this dissertation as Pontormo’s Halberdier (Francesco Guardi) at the Getty. This identification has been convincingly supported in the scholarship of Elizabeth Cropper, whose thorough examination of the Halberdier is a starting-point from which the present investigation of the Pygmalion and

Galatea—the portrait’s cover—proceeds.16

In her assessment of the painting, Cropper sets a model for the study of republican symbolism in Florentine art, identifying characteristic modes in which the ideologies of the last republic appear manifest in its associated imagery. In particular, she focuses on the Halberdier’s indebtedness to famous fifteenth-century statues of the young shepherd David, a biblical hero who served as polemical icon of the small republic. This dissertation draws attention to repeated instances in which David appears as a potent republican symbol, not only during the republic, but also after its defeat.17 Especially relevant, therefore, is Cropper’s success in distinguishing

15 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 274.

16 Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier (Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 1997). For most of the twentieth century, the identification of the sitter was the subject of debate, an issue addressed in Chapter 4 of this dissertation. For the most recent summary and bibliography of the opposing views (and further support for Cropper’s claims) see Salvatore Lo Re, Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana: Studi su Benedetto Varchi (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2008), 443-54.

17 This study examines republican and Medicean responses to statues by Donatello and Michelangelo from the moment of their origin until the late 1530s, in conjunction with a study of republican uses of Davidian rhetoric during the period in question. The bibliography is large, although piecemeal. For Donatello’s statues, the main resources include Francesco Caglioti, Donatello e i Medici: Storia del David e della Giuditta (Florence: Olschki, 2000); Christine Sperling, “Donatello’s bronze ‘David’ and the demands of Medici politics,” Burlington Magazine 134 (1992): 218-224; Roger J. Crum, “Donatello’s bronze David and the question of foreign versus domestic tyranny,” Renaissance Studies 10, no. 4 (1996): 440-450; Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (March, 2001): 32-47; Robert Williams, “‘Virtus Perficitur’: On the Meaning of Donatello’s Bronze ‘David,’” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 53, 2/3 (2009): 217-228; Maria Monica Donato, “Hercules and David in the Early Decoration of the 8 between shrewd Medicean appropriations of republican visual language (designed to connect the family in the public consciousness with traditional Florentine values) and bona fide republican imagery.

Despite my reliance on Cropper’s analysis of the Halberdier, our views on its cover differ considerably. Currently accepted interpretations of the Pygmalion and Galatea understand the painting as a counterpoint to the portrait it was designed to cover.18 Cropper, though uncompromisingly republican in her reading of the Halberdier, argues that the Pygmalion and

Galatea conveys a contradictory message: that whereas the Halberdier expresses the sitter’s interest in republican victory, its cover instead functions as plea for peace.19 Despite their shared origin, the two paintings are presented in opposition.

The initial chapters of this dissertation construct a reading that reconciles the Pygmalion and Galatea with the republican portrait it was created to accompany. The first chapter (“An

Encounter at Dawn”) reconsiders Venus’s role in Bronzino’s painting, attributing to her a rousing, rather than pacifying, influence. The composition is likened to Florentine poetic formulae elaborated in the fifteenth century—in which virtuous love inspires young men to courageous action—and also to wartime republican rhetoric designed to inspire Florentine youths like Francesco Guardi to fight in the last republic’s defense. The second chapter (“Flesh

Palazzo Vecchio: Manuscript Evidence,” JWCI 54 (1991): 83-98; Andrew Butterfield, “New evidence for the Iconography of David in Quattrocento Florence,” I Tatti Studies 6 (1995), 116- 117; Allie Terry, “Donatello’s Decapitations and the Rhetoric of Beheading in Medicean Florence,” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 5 (2009): 609-638; Alessandro Parronchi, Donatello e il Potere (Florence: Il Portolano, 1980); Volker Herzner, “David Florentinus,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 24 (1982): 63-142.

18 See Chapter 1, pages 46-7, and Chapter 2, page 69.

19 Cropper, “‘Heu vicit Venus’: amour et désir au XVI siècle à Florence,” in Daniel Arasse: historien de l’art, ed. Danièle Cohn, trans. by Francois Boisivon (Paris: Les Èditions des Cendres/ INHA, 2010): 87-104.

9 and Stone”) explores the specific political significance of Bronzino’s artistic choices, paying special attention to his allusion to Michelangelo’s marble David, whose form he incorporates into the figure of Pygmalion’s beloved.20 The chapter traces the development of the David’s anti-Medicean reputation, in order to suggest that in the Pygmalion and Galatea, Pygmalion’s love for Michelangelo’s statue functions as an allegorical performance of Francesco Guardi’s devotion to the Florentine republic.21 In both chapters, the Pygmalion and Galatea is shown to respond to precisely the same republican atmosphere that Cropper has associated with the

Halberdier, and that the two paintings function as an entirely harmonious pair.

IV

After the Pygmalion and Galatea, this study moves forward from the period of the Siege to some seven years after the last republic’s defeat. The third chapter examines Bronzino’s

20 Though not the first to recognize the figural allusion, this study is the first to construct a political interpretation of the painting in which the artistic reference plays a meaningful part. Previous studies focus on Bronzino’s interest in the paragone between painting and sculpture. See Maurice Brock, Bronzino, Transl. David Poole Radzinowicz and Christine Schultz-Touge (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), 57-58; Stuart Currie, “Secularised Sculptural Imagery, the Paragone Debate and Ironic Contextual in Bronzino’s Pygmalion Painting,” in Secular Sculpture, 1300-1500, Phillip Lindley, Thomas Frangenberg, eds. (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000): 237-253.

21 On the commission of Michelangelo’s marble David and the political motivations behind its placement, important resources include David Summers, “David’s Scowl,” in William Wallace, ed. Michelangelo: Selected Readings (New York: Garland, 1999): 81-92; Saul Levine, “The Location of Michelangelo’s David: The Meeting of January 25, 1504,” Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 21-49; Michael Hirst, “Michelangelo in Florence: ‘David’ in 1503 and ‘Hercules’ in 1506,” Burlington Magazine 142, no. 1169 (Aug. 2000): 487-492; Joost Keizer, “Giuliano Salviati, Michelangelo and the ‘David’,” Burlington Magazine 150 (Oct. 2008): 664-68; Lorenzo Polizzotto, “Iustus ut palma florebit: Pier Soderini and Florentine Justice,” in Rituals, Images, and Words, F.W. Kent and Charles Zika, eds., vol. 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005); Charles Seymour, Michelangelo’s David: A Search for Identity (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), 68-72. On its martial significance, see Paul Barolsky, “Machiavelli, Michelangelo and ‘David’,” Source: Notes in the History of Art 23, no. 3 (Spring 2004), 32 and Marie L. Ahern, “David, the Military Exemplum,” in The David Myth in Western Literature edited by Raymond- Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik. (West Lafayette, IA: Purdue Research Foundation, 1980): 106- 119.

10

Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (c. 1537), with which this introduction began. Despite the change in government, republican themes present in Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea are shown to reappear—altered but no less vigorous—in the Ugolino Martelli, a painting carried out under

Medicean rule.

Once again, as in the Halberdier and the Pygmalion and Galatea, the Portrait of Ugolino

Martelli incorporates a well-known statue of David. In this case, Bronzino recreates the

Donatellesque Martelli David, a marble figure prominently displayed in the background of the portrait.22 Scholars have been reluctant to consider a republican interpretation of this element.

Finding the David’s partisan symbolism incredible in a painting datable to c. 1537, recent studies propose that the portrait’s other iconographical elements function in opposition to the statue, robbing the latter of its undisputed former polemical power.23 In Chapter Three, (“Painting

David in the City of Goliath”), this conclusion is shown to conflict with the subject’s biography and the period’s history. It betrays an insensitivity to contemporary uses of David as a political symbol, and is moreover contingent upon a misreading of the painting’s other components.

These errors reflect an unawareness of the circumstances of the painting’s origin.

Compared with other periods in Florentine history, the first years following the Siege are relatively understudied, particularly in Anglophone scholarship. Even Eric Cochrane’s Florence in the Forgotten Centuries: 1527-1800 forgets the 1530s almost entirely, relegating the Siege to

22 National Gallery, Washington. In the sixteenth century, the Martelli David was considered a work by Donatello, although that attribution has since been discredited. John Pope-Hennessey, “The Martelli David,” Burlington Magazine 101, no. 673 (Apr., 1959): 132 + 134-139. For the purposes of my study of the Ugolino Martelli, I retain the period view.

23 One recent example of this treatment is Maurice Brock, “Le Portrait d’Ugolino Martelli par Bronzino: un Homère florentin?” in Luisa Capodieci and Philip Ford, eds., Homère à la Renaissance: Mythe et transfigurations (Rome: Académie de à Rome, 2011), 323-344.

11 the preface, and beginning the volume with “Florence in the 1540s.”24 Thus in order to reconstruct the context of the Ugolino Martelli, this study relies heavily on primary-source documents, put into context by the efforts of, especially, Paolo Simoncelli, Rudolf von Albertini,

Furio Diaz, Salvatore Lo Re, Umberto Pirotti, and Giorgio Costa, and the writings of the period’s own historians, such as Benedetto Varchi, Jacopo Nardi, and Bernardo Segni, who provide sensitive, if biased, accounts.25 These materials conjure the image of a decade wracked by nearly constant tumult.

The Siege of Florence came to an end in the late summer of 1530, when, starved into submission, the republican forces surrendered to their imperial aggressors. On the 12th of August, representatives of Charles V and his Medici allies assumed control of the city.26 This capitulation resulted in the hasty flight of many Florentine republicans, wary of retaliation from their victorious enemies. Unlike the overthrow of the Soderini republic in 1512, the Medici restoration of 1530 was violent and prolonged, leaving the city with what Simoncelli has termed

24 Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). Important exceptions include two studies by R. Burr Litchfield, The Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986), and Florence Ducal Capital, 1530-1630 (New York: ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008).

25 Paolo Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 1530-54 vol. 1 (Florence, Franco Angeli, 2006); Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato. Storia e coscienza politica (Turin: Einaudi, 1970); Diaz, Il Granducato di Firenze; Salvatore Lo Re, Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana; Umberto Pirotti, Benedetto Varchi e la cultura del suo tempo (Florence: Olschki, 1971); Giorgio Costa, Michelangelo alle corti di Niccolò Ridolfi e Cosimo I. (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009). Benedetto Varchi, Opere di Benedetto Varchi... (Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1858-9) and Storia Fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi…, 3 vols., edited by Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Le Monnier, 1857-88); Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, edited by Agenore Gelli (Florence: F. Le Monnier, 1858); Bernardo Segni, Istorie fiorentine dall'anno MDXXVII al MDLV scritte da Bernardo Segni. Pubblicate per cura di G. Gargani giusta una copia scritta da (Florence: Barbèra, Bianchi e comp., 1857).

26 The treaty was produced four days earlier (on the 8th of August), brokered by Malatesta Baglioni, captain of the republican forces. See Nardi, Istorie, I, 210-218 (with the articles of the accord on pages 215-217); Varchi, Storia Fiorentina, I, 360.

12 a “deep ideological wound.”27 The change in government had serious repercussions for opponents of the new regime: between August and December of 1530, eight were executed, several tortured, and some three hundred imprisoned.28 Nearly two hundred republicans were immediately banished, while countless more departed of their own accord, since at the time of the surrender, they were promised the freedom to leave Florence unmolested, to go without penalty wheresoever they pleased.29

Bronzino was among those who chose to leave. In 1530, he abandoned Florence for

Pesaro, seeking the patronage of Duke Guidobaldo della Rovere.30 Though we have no statement to the fact, it seems that the recent shift in government was not to the painter’s taste;

Vasari connects Bronzino’s departure not with the distress of the Siege, but with its conclusion and result.31 Pesaro served as a popular refuge for displaced anti-Mediceans, but whatever

Bronzino’s personal politics, his departure comes as no surprise—after the peace of 1530, very

27 Simoncelli, Fuoruscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 18. See also von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato, 275-278.

28 On the retaliation, see the sources listen in note 23 above, and Nicholas Scott Baker, “For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480-1560” Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2 (Summer, 2009): 444-478.

29 Nardi, Istorie, II, p. 232. Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 18-21.

30 For this period, see Antonio Natali, “Agnolo Bronzino’s Early Years: Florence, then Pesaro,” in Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, Bronzino: Painter and Poet in Renaissance Florence, exh. cat. (Florence: Mandragora, 2010): 37-55. In Pesaro, Bronzino painted a portrait of Duke Guidobaldo (Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti) which, although compositionally related to works discussed in this dissertation, operates in an entirely different mode. See Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino and the Medici, cat. no., 18, 93.

31 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 594-5: “Passato poi l’assedio di Firenze, e fatto l’accordo, andò, come altrove s’è detto, a Pesero...”

13 few of the city’s artists remained.32 Despite having left the city in 1530, Bronzino returned at the behest of Pontormo in 1532, and spent most of the following decade in Florence.33

Rather than being extinguished by the events of 1530, republican hopes grew stronger in the years that followed. In 1532, Alessandro de’ Medici became the city’s first duke, and under his rule, Florentine dissatisfaction grew. Tales quickly spread of Alessandro’s brutal disposition and wanton—if not predatory—sexual tastes. Angry Florentines (even those who had supported the republican surrender of 1530) widely decried his rule as tyrannical.34

In response, the ranks of Florentine exiles swelled. The fuorusciti established large communities primarily based in Rome, Lyon, and the Veneto. From abroad, they instituted a formal “republic of exiles,” with elections held in 1532 and ‘34 to select six representatives, the

“procuratori della libertà della repubblica fiorentina.”35 In spite of the last republic’s defeat, the repubblica fiorentina maintained an active although uprooted existence based on popular representation. According to Paolo Simoncelli, public memory to this day retains little record of this republic-in-exile, due to the efforts of the Medicean state.36 Nevertheless, Florentine dissatisfaction, the fuorusciti narrative, and the efforts of the exiles to restore the republic are historical elements that feature prominently in my study of Ugolino Martelli, who joined the

32 On Pesaro, see Jacopo Nardi, Letter to Benedetto Varchi, ASF Carte Strozziane, Serie I, 95, f.105r. By 1530, the Siege and its aftermath had scattered or killed many of the city’s artists, and drained their patrons of their resources. Franciabigio, del Sarto, and Jacopo Puligo were dead. Rosso Fiorentino left Florence for the court of Francis I, while Francesco de’ Rossi, Francesco Salviati, and Jacopino del Conte each departed for Rome. See Charles McCorquodale, Bronzino, (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 54.

33 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 595.

34 On Alessandro, see Chapter 3, pages 119, 150.

35 Nardi, Istorie, II, 243.

36 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino,18, 52-4.

14 exiles shortly after his portrayal by Bronzino, and whose portrait seems to communicate his investment in their interests.

The city’s involvement in much larger political contests compounded Florentine instability, in turn fueling republican optimism. Charles V, Francis I, and the Catholic all laid claim to Tuscan soil, creating tensions that were intensified by the Turkish threat from the

East. In 1534, the death of the Medici pope Clement VII further undermined Alessandro’s reign.

Paul III Farnese, Clement’s successor, harbored goals that were decidedly anti-Medicean.

Republican aspirations reached their highest point in 1537, with the assassination of Duke

Alessandro in early January.37

Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli likely dates to the autumn following

Alessandro’s murder.38 Chapter Three begins by taking into account two important historical factors insufficiently addressed in previous studies: first, that the Ugolino Martelli is the portrait of a republican, and second, that it originates in a moment when, despite significant disappointments, hopes for a restoration of the republic continued strong. These factors permit a republican reading of the Martelli David in the portrait’s background, regardless of the painting’s chronological distance from the actual last republic. The defeat of the last republic was followed by a series of events—including Alessandro’s assassination—that sharpened the figure’s anti- tyrannical connotation: when Bronzino painted the Ugolino Martelli, the young shepherd was perhaps more divisive than ever before.

The incorporation of text from Homer’s Iliad—prominently legible on the table next to

Ugolino—refines the portrait’s political message. Its Renaissance usage conflicts with recent

37 See, for example, Spini, Cosimo I, 12.

38 For the dating, see Chapter 3, page 100, n. 311.

15 interpretations that cite the text in support of an apolitical or even Medicean reading of the painting. Instead, as a political allegory, the literary material complements the statue’s anti-

Medicean significance—but only for those able to recognize it. Written in Ancient Greek and relying on an understanding of rhetorical apophasis, the text’s republican allusions are only available to the scholarly viewer. The Martelli David is likewise a republican symbol camouflaged as an innocuous family heirloom. Drawing parallels with the past, Bronzino’s

Portrait of Ugolino Martelli offers specific partisan comment upon the Florentine present, while protecting painter and patron from Medicean censure.

V.

David again features prominently in the fourth chapter (“A More Audacious Portrait”), which turns from Ugolino’s portrait to that of his brother-in-law, Carlo Neroni. While this dissertation takes Bronzino as its central focus, Pontormo’s Carlo Neroni (Young Man in a Red

Cap) presents an ideal opportunity for reconsidering the relationship between chronology and perceived ideology in Florentine portraiture.39

In the Carlo Neroni, Pontormo revisits the composition of his c. 1529 Halberdier

(discussed in Chapters One and Two). The paintings are remarkably alike, with Neroni’s figure incorporating the same allusions to Donatello’s David that drive republican interpretations of the

Halberdier. Neroni’s expression, however, differs from that of the Halberdier in that it recalls

Michelangelo’s marble David. Noting these Davidian references, recent examinations have

39 Private collection, on loan to the National Gallery, London. Previously lost, the painting made its modern debut in 2008, first with Francis Russell, “A Portrait of a Young Man in a Black by Pontormo,” Burlington Magazine 50 (Oct., 2008): 675-77 and the National Gallery exhibition, Renaissance Faces: from Van Eyck to Titian, edited by Lorne Campbell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

16 concluded that as a frankly republican picture, the Neroni—like the Halberdier—must also date to the period of the Siege.40

A new reading of the painting’s inscription, however, suggests that the Carlo Neroni should be re-dated to c. 1538-9. And, as with the Ugolino Martelli, an origin in the late 1530s would not invalidate the republican significance of the image’s Davidian elements. In c.1538-9, despite the installation of the Medici Duchy, Pontormo might reasonably have employed certain of the same artistic means to express republican sentiment in the Carlo Neroni as he had ten years previous, in the Halberdier.

This proposal undermines an established scholarly paradigm according to which the defeat of the last republic is presumed to have rapidly neutralized important republican symbols.

Although this chronological/political framework continues to play a fundamental part in longstanding debates over certain portraits by Pontormo and Bronzino, the arguments put forward in Chapter Four suggest that it should no longer be considered a valuable tool for their interpretation.41 Regardless of the Neroni’s actual date, these paintings should not be subject to ideological interpretations based solely on their chronology in relation to the establishment of the

40 Carol Plazzotta in Renaissance Faces, 224 (cat. no. 69).

41 Pontormo’s Halberdier seems to set a formal standard for several portraits from the 1530s, including (besides the Carlo Neroni) Bronzino’s Metropolitan Young Man with a Book, and anonymous portrait formerly in the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection, sold by Sotheby’s in 2010. The catalogue essay for the sale was written by Janet Cox-Rearick, who used this chronological approach to identify the sitter as Cosimo I de’ Medici, datable to c. 1538. (“Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici” in The Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection: Renaissance & Masterworks, (sales catalogue) Sotheby’s London, 08 July 2009). More recently, Philippe Costamagna uses the same republican/Medicean division to guide his thinking in “Pontormo’s Lautenspieler. Ein wiederentdecktes Bildnis aus der Zeit der Florentiner Republik,” in Bastian Eclercy, ed., Pontormo: Meisterwerke des Manierismus in Florenz, transl. by Eva Dewes (Hannover: Landesmuseum, 2013): 97-105.

17

Duchy. The Medici victory of 1530 did not result in immediate and far-reaching shifts in the political significance of republican visual imagery—at least not in favor of the victors.

VI.

The conclusions put forward in this dissertation have important implications for several other early portraits by Bronzino. These paintings have much in common with the Ugolino

Martelli, and likewise predate the start of Bronzino’s courtly career [Chart I]. Where they can be identified, the sitters are connected to each other and Bronzino by their involvement in

Florentine academic communities, while the images themselves are visually linked by elements of presentation, style, cultural reference, and intellectual tone. Ugolino’s pose is inspired by

Michelangelo’s Giuliano de’ Medici, a sculpture whose influence is equally evident in the Uffizi

Lyric Poet (Young Man with a Lute) (c. 1534) and the Allegorical Portrait of Dante (c.1532-3).

The Martelli, the Bartolomeo Panciatichi (c.1534), and the Metropolitan Young Man with a

Book (c. 1538) stand within similarly rendered and equally unmistakable Florentine architectural spaces.42 The latter, like the Carlo Neroni, owes its figural composition to Donatello, via the

Halberdier. All six portraits are characterized by a quiet literary emphasis, and the Allegorical

Portrait of Dante, Ugolino Martelli, and the Lorenzo Lenzi (c.1527-8 or c.1532-4) even

42 Many of the most influential examples of characteristically “Florentine” art were originally elaborated in Medici commissions. Such beginnings did not dictate these objects’ later reception, which varied from case to case. Some art associated with the early Medici (e.g.Donatello’s Davids) became, by its public treatment, rife with anti-Medicean symbolism. Other material—for example, the recognizable architectural idiom of pietra serena stone paired with white stucco used by Brunelleschi, and later by Michelangelo, at the Medici church of San Lorenzo—came to be seen as defining a quintessentially and apolitically Florentine visual language. Michelangelo’s works were celebrated by republicans even when explicitly Medicean, such as in the case of the statues for the at San Lorenzo. This variability is often related to the fact that sixteen-century republicans had no problem with the Medici family per se, speaking reverently of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent while distrusting and disliking the new power-hungry dukes.

18 incorporate legible selections of text. Only the Lyric Poet, in which an inkwell appears, does not include a book.43

In a series of influential essays beginning in 1985, Elizabeth Cropper has argued that these portraits should be identified as an independent group. She relates their shared formal characteristics to intellectual interests common to both Bronzino and his sitters, and to widely- felt social tension.44 Considering portraits by Bronzino and his teacher for the Philadelphia

Museum of Art’s 2004 exhibition, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence, she writes that “the cultural strife that erupted in

43 The dating of the Ugolino Martelli is discussed in Chapter 3, page 100, note 311. The Lorenzo Lenzi (Milan) is alternately dated to either c. 1527-8 or to c. 1532-4. For the earlier dating, see Natali-Falciani, Bronzino, cat. no. IV.1, p. 202 (Raffaele de Giorgi), and Alessandro Cecchi’s important article, “‘Famose Frondi de cui santi honori …’: un sonetto del Varchi e il ritratto di Lorenzo Lenzi dipinto dal Bronzino,” Artista 2 (1990): 8-19, esp. 11, 17. For the later dating, see Elizabeth Cropper, “Pontormo and Bronzino in Philadelphia: A Double Portrait” in Carl Brandon Strehlke, ed., Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence, exh. cat., (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004): 1-33, esp. 23-5, and Cropper in Natali-Falciani, “Bronzino,” 247. A complete bibliography of the dating is given by Antonio Geremicca, Bronzino (Rome: Universitalia, 2013) 88, n. 160, who suggests c. 1529. While I find the later dating more compelling, the earlier dating to the period of the last republic would hardly alter my view of its republican presentation. For the Uffizi Lyric Poet (c.1532-4) see Natali-Falciani, Bronzino, cat. no. V.3, 260 (Sefy Hendler), and Bronzino’s study for the painting in Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino and the Medici, cat. no. 22, 104. For the Metropolitan Young Man with a Book (c. 1534-8) see Bambach, ed. The Drawings of Bronzino, 27, 29, and Carlo Falciani, “Spigolature sul Bronzino (e Pontormo)” Paragone 64 (2013):19-49, 23. The Bartolomeo Panciatichi (Uffizi) was in the past generally dated to c. 1542, but has very recently been convincingly re-dated to c.1534 by Falciani (“Spigolature,” 24), a dating accepted by Geremicca (Bronzino, 113-4).

44 Cropper, “Prolegomena to a New Interpretation of Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth edited by Andrew Morrogh, vol. II (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1985): 149-162; Idem, “L’arte cortigiana a Firenze: dalla repubblica dissimulata allo stato paterno,” in Roberto Paolo Ciardi and Antonio Natali, eds. Storia delle Arti in Toscana: il Cinquecento, (Florence: Edifir, 2000): 85-115; Idem, “Preparing to Finish: Portraits by Pontormo and Bronzino around 1530,” Opere e giorni, 2001, 499-504 (reprinted in Sixteenth-Century , edited by Michael W. Cole [Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006], 172-182. “A Double Portrait” (2004) and idem, “Per una lettura dei ritratti fiorentini del Bronzino,” Bronzino: Painter and Poet, 245-255.

19 revolution, war, antipapal religious controversy, and the urgent demand for reform does not merely constitute the background to [Pontormo and Bronzino’s] representation of individual

Florentines. Rather it defines the very contingencies determining the existences of both the artists and their sitters.”45

In these eloquent studies, Cropper rejects a long-standing and illogical tradition that once anachronistically related portraits from the 1530s to the courtly atmosphere of the later sixteenth century.46 Instead, she draws attention to their literary qualities and emphasis on the Florentine past, positing that, left without civic pride in Duke Alessandro’s Florence, Bronzino and his peers turned their focus to the city’s grand cultural legacy. These portraits—filled as they are with references to works by, for example, Michelangelo, Donatello, , and Dante— display, according to Cropper, a kind of Florentine patriotism, or fiorentinità, that purposely has nothing (and therefore everything) to do with current events.

Yet instances of clear republican iconography in these works have not gone unnoticed.

In the 1990s, Jonathan Nelson and Alessandro Cecchi used the legible text in the Allegorical

Portrait of Dante and the Lorenzo Lenzi to associate the paintings with the fuorusciti community, particularly with scholarly circles of exiled intellectuals in Padua and Rome.47 In the 1530s, deprived of a state or court they might willingly serve, Florentine letterati like Lenzi and Martelli established these local academies with the goal of preserving and promoting Florentine culture

45 Cropper, “A Double Portrait,” 7-8.

46 For a discussion of this treatment, see Chapter 4. For rebuttal, see, for example, Cropper, “Prolegomena,” 149.

47 Jonathan Katz Nelson, “Dante Portraits in Sixteenth Century Florence,” Gazette des beaux- arts, 6th ser.120, (September 1992): 59-77. Cecchi, “‘Famose Frondi”; idem, “Il Bronzino, Benedetto Varchi, e l’Accademica Fiorentina; ritratti di poeti, letterati e personaggi illustri della corte medicea,” Antichità Viva 30 (1991): 17-28; Idem, Agnolo Bronzino (Florence: Scala, 1996).

20 while abroad. In the 1540s, many of these exiled letterati would return to join Bronzino in the

Accademia Fiorentina, a body operating under the aegis of Duke Cosimo—a mark of his success in winning over the previously alienated Florentine intellectual community.48 In 2000, Deborah

Parker’s study of Bronzino’s career as a poet and academician drew attention to the painter’s investment in popular academic debates, setting aside the issue of partisanship. Her volume was closely followed by Maurice Brock’s 2002 monograph, which sought to parse Bronzino’s artistic interest in the paragone and questione della lingua, presented as demonstrations of the apolitical fiorentinità first proposed by Cropper.49

In 2004, however, Carl Strehlke returned to the matter of partisanship in his introduction to the Philadelphia Museum’s catalogue. Provocatively entitled “Pontormo and Bronzino, for and against the Medici,” the essay asked whether the two painters might have harbored anti-

Medicean feelings, and whether there might be evidence of such sentiment in their early portraits.

Strehlke looks the beyond biographical factors to the portraits’ formal characteristics, finding that their perceived courtliness is a poor indicator of political affiliation, because the standard of

Medicean court portraiture at mid-century was in actuality an appropriation of an artistic mode developed by the two painters for depicting their own peers in the 1520s and ’30s.50 The dukes

Alessandro and Cosimo I purposely favored a style of portraiture that had its origins in a format

48 For the Accademia Fiorentina, see Michel Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo principe: Cultura e politica a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I e di Francesco de’ Medici (Rome: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2004), esp. 31-4.

49 Brock, Bronzino. Brock’s monograph was followed by a volume by Claudio Strinati, which reflects recent scholarship without adding new insight. Strinati, Bronzino (Rome: Viviani, 2010).

50 Carl Brandon Strehlke, “Bronzino and Pontormo, For and Against The Medici,” in Strehlke, ed., Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici, xi-xiii, esp. xii. Strehlke draws attention to the similarities between Pontormo’s Alessandro de’ Medici and portraits like Bronzino’s Lyric Poet, writing that Pontormo knew he was creating an anomalous ducal image.

21 designed for portraying the city’s letterati. This, according to Strehlke, was one of several tactical moves—for Cosimo ultimately successful—in winning over Florence’s intellectual and artistic elite. Several characteristics later associated with ducal imagery, he argues, were in fact elaborated before Medici control was truly reestablished, in images that were “neither Medicean, nor courtly.”51

Philippe Costamagna reached similar conclusions a few years later, in an essay on

Bronzino’s portraits written for the Metropolitan Museum’s 2010 exhibition on Bronzino’s drawings.52 Costamagna differentiates between Florentine portraiture before and after Cosimo’s reign, with the earlier works defined as “personal keepsakes,” in contrast with later images intended as glorifications of the ruling family and ducal courtiers.53 This division allows

Costamagna to propose that in Bronzino’s early portraits, frequent allusions to Michelangelo’s

Giuliano de’ Medici “most likely indicate the republican sympathies of the sitters,” rather than recording Medicean allegiance.54

The republican hypotheses put forward by Strehlke and Costamagna remain controversial.

In 2010, Massimo Firpo condemned Strehlke’s rather mild suggestion about potential partisan sentiment as being “without foundation.”55 The statement appears in a catalogue essay

51 Ibid.

52 Philippe Costamagna, “The Portraits of Bronzino,” in Carmen Bambach, Janet Cox-Rearick, George Goldner, eds., Bronzino as Draftsman, exh. cat., New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010): 51-60.

53 Ibid., 51.

54 Ibid., 57.

55 “Priva di fondamento appare l’ipotesi di una lettura in chiave antimedicea della sua ritrattistica suggerita da Carl Brandon Strehlke.” Massimo Firpo, “Bronzino e i Medici” / “Bronzino and the Medici.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, 91-99, 99 n. 5.

22 accompanying the first monographic exhibition of Bronzino’s paintings, “Bronzino: Painter and

Poet at the Court of the Medici,” held at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Firpo contends that

“not only Bronzino’s artistic activity and role as court painter, but also his literary career, linguistic choices, and his close friends place him firmly in the orbit of the Medici establishment.”56 Though certainly justified by Bronzino’s later career, Firpo’s argument—like the show’s title—ignores some fifteen years of independent works made before the start of

Bronzino’s role as court painter.57

In a new volume by Nicholas Scott Baker, the fourth decade of the cinquecento is similarly elided with the Medicean future. Baker contradicts Costamagna by arguing that in the

1530s, Bronzino’s frequent references to Michelangelo’s Giuliano de’ Medici “carried an acknowledgement of the cultural and political predominance of the Medici in the city.”58 Baker proposes that the act of reading “suggests a distance from the practice of public

56 Ibid, 95 (translation mine). Firpo’s argument regarding Bronzino’s loyalty to the Medici and the loyalty of his sitters is reductive. For example, although it is true that Bronzino’s subject Bartolomeo Panciatichi was connected to the court, as Firpo notes, this is not in itself grounds for dismissing the potential for displays of insubordination—in the 1556, Panciatichi hosted in his home a celebration of the anniversary of Alessandro’s murder. For an account of the event, see Domenico Zanrè, “Ritual and Parody in Mid-Cinquecento Florence. Cosimo de’ Medici and the Accademia del Piano,” in Konrad Eisenbichler, ed., The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2001): 189-205.

57 The Natali-Falciani catalogue provides a wonderful resource for the entirety of Bronzino’s career, despite the title. Bronzino is presented as a highly erudite painter whose work is engaged with questions of theory and informed by his involvement in an elite circle of artists, poets, and scholars. Though full of praise for the exhibition and catalogue, in a review, Strehlke remarked that the catalogue “sets the stage for a new nuanced understanding of Bronzino that does not, as its title would have it, seem him just in terms of a Medici courtier.” Carl Strehlke, “Review of Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, eds., Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici” Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. 2 (Summer, 2011).

58 Nicholas Scott Baker, The Fruit of Liberty: Political Culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1550 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2013).

23 affairs…consigned now to the realm of literature.”59 He attributes a sly political agnosticism to the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, writing that the portrait reflects the sitter’s desire to accommodate the Medici, and Ugolino’s esteem for his own “social status and prestige” over

“the political freedoms of civic republicanism.”60 Finally, apparently unaware of Ugolino’s fuorusciti connections and the urgent republican use of Davidian imagery in the 1530s, Baker goes on to argue that in the Ugolino Martelli, the statue of David has “undergone a political transubstantiation,” robbed of its republican significance, and shown in the process of becoming

“an avatar for the Medici prince.”61 Only Antonio Geremicca’s new volume presents a persuasive view of the period, and as a result, convincingly concludes that the Ugolino Martelli

“may embody the hope for a better future for Florence and her citizens,” in a battle fought by “a new class of young aristocrats, well-lettered, like David, and like David, cleverly waiting for the opportune moment to fight.”62

This dissertation’s treatment of Bronzino’s portraiture from the 1530s differs from most previous investigations because, whether considering his subject’s personal allegiances or the paintings’ iconographical elements, it does so against a background of historical investigation that analyzes the contemporary political situation without prioritizing the actual outcome over those potentialities that—at the time—seemed equally, if not more likely to come to pass. Where in other studies a precipitous emphasis upon the ultimate futility of republican aims has led to the

59 Though not an art historian, Baker’s book is arranged around the study of Florentine works of art. He widely acknowledges his dependence on Elizabeth Cropper for his evaluation of the Ugolino Martelli. Baker, ibid., 178.

60 Baker, Fruit of Liberty, 143.

61 Ibid., 229-30.

62 Geremicca, Bronzino, 130 (translation mine).

24 interpretation of Bronzino’s early portraits as demonstrative of Medicean allegiance or purposeful detachment from current events, here it is proposed that they reflect partisan ambitions whose eventual disappointment has clouded our ability to recognize their presence.

As Cropper has shown, successful interpretation of the portraits cannot be carried out without a close study of their historical context. But in this dissertation their literary and artistic references are understood to function not as a removal or distancing from current political events, but as a means of safely articulating precise—and dissenting—commentary upon them. In the aftermath of the Florentine Siege, literary consciousness provided a valid, even glorified channel for the exploration of political sentiment. Where the text can be read—in the Ugolino Martelli, the Lorenzo Lenzi, and Allegorical Portrait of Dante—it uniformly serves to connect the sitters to the republican community of exiles, the fuorusciti. Where identifications can be made, the sitters are notable for their academic as well as for their subversive reputations, and in the 1530s, the two frequently went hand in hand. And, in tracing the Davidian theme, it becomes clear that republican visual symbols could remain potent long after the republic’s defeat. More often than not, the portraits’ prominent artistic references seem specifically chosen for their ability to express dissent. Since in the 1530s, registering opposition could be a potentially dangerous act,

Bronzino and his patrons used these cultural references to safely signal counter-hegemonic allegiance without incurring censure. The paintings employ famous works of art and literature not to disengage, but to dissimulate.

25

CHAPTER ONE: An Encounter at Dawn

On February 3rd, 1530, Bartolomeo Cavalcanti addressed a congregation of armed

Florentine soldiers from the pulpit of Santo Spirito. Outfitted in a breastplate and gesturing grandly, Cavalcanti spoke enthusiastically of liberty and self-sacrifice in an attempt to lift republican morale.63 His listeners, pikemen and arquebusiers, kept their weapons near at hand: the city had been under attack by the armies of Charles V and Clement VII since late October.64

The republic had at first fared well, but Florentine defenses had weakened, the population wracked by hunger and decimated by plague.65 Faced with the outsized strength and resources of the joint imperial and papal force, republican confidence had flagged. “Each of us,”

Cavalcanti acknowledged, “is weighed down by bitter thoughts concerning the current state of

63 The speech appears in print as “Oratione di M. Bartolomeo Cavalcanti Fiorentino,” in Francesco Sansovino, ed., Delle oratione volgarmente scritte da molti huomini illustri (Venice, 1561), and Orazioni Scelte del Secolo SVI. Ridotte a buona lezione e commentate dal Prof. Giuseppe Lisio (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1897), 11-33. All page numbers refer to the Lisio edition. Sixteenth-century accounts of Cavalcanti’s speech and the event are plentiful. See, for example, Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. II, 194; Bernardo Segni, Istorie fiorentine, 56-7. For his armor and presentation, see also Giovan Battista Busini, “Letter to Benedetto Varchi X” in Opere di Benedetto Varchi, ora per la prima volta raccolte, vol. 1 (Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1858): 467-8, 468: “L’anno dell’assedio furono i parlatori sopra alla milizia Baccio Cavalcanti in Santo Spirito, che orò armato di corsaletto, molto bene, con bei gesti ed ardire.”

64 C. C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The “de Militia” of Leonardo Bruni (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 299. On the arming of the spectators, see Varchi, loc. cit. Segni is more descriptive: “erano armate a proporzione di picche, di corsalette, e d’archibusi con si belle arme, e in tant’abbondanza, che la vista di esse, e la considerazione della spesa, arrecava agli animi somma maraviglia e diletto e gran confidenza” (Segni, op. cit, 56).

65 For a history of the devastation wrought by the Siege, see Spini, Cosimo I, 5. For a primary source description, see the letter sent by the Venetian ambassador from Florence on February 2nd, 1530, in Eugenio Albèri, ed. L’assedio di Firenze illustrato con inediti documenti (Florence: Clio, 1840), 175.

26 affairs.”66 Still he urged his listeners to take heart, despite such apparently woeful odds. He directed their thoughts to a feminine personification of republican Florence, Fiorenza, who, he explained, with the establishment of the last republic in 1527, had been recently reborn in a beautiful, yet fragile body.67 Cavalcanti promised the young militiamen that the divine love inflaming their hearts for Fiorenza—she favored by God—would armor their souls and lead them to victory in the unequal contest.68 This patriotic rhetoric, an amalgamation of Christian, chivalric, and classicizing themes, dominates Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea [fig.1.1], and ties the painting to the republican experience of the Siege.

Likely among Cavalcanti’s listeners was the young Florentine Francesco Guardi, who,

Vasari tells us, appears in a portrait by Pontormo, painted at the time of the Siege. This “opera bellissima” is now identified as Pontormo’s Halberdier at the Getty [fig. 1.2]. Bronzino was

Pontormo’s pupil, and, according to Vasari, painted the Pygmalion and Galatea to serve as the portrait’s cover.”69 There is no reason to doubt Vasari’s statement, although scholarship has not yet reconciled the two images as a coherent pair.70 The difficulty arises from the fact that one is

66 “La conditione delle presenti cose, che con amari pensieri la mente di ciascuno ingombra.” Cavalcanti, “Oratione,” 11.

67 Ibid., 13.

68 Ibid., 19, 15.

69 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 274. On the Halberdier, see Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier. For a history of the debate surrounding the painting’s identification, see Lo Re, Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana, 443-54.

70 On renaissance portrait covers, see Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture in the (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), 15-30. The Pontormo is larger by 11 centimeters in height and 9 centimeters in width, a discrepancy that would have been reconciled by a framing device. See Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” in David Franklin, ed., , Michelangelo, and the Renaissance in Florence, exh. cat. (Ottawa: Museum of Fine Arts of Canada, 2005), 234. The dimensions of the Pygmalion are not original, being now slightly larger than it once was. See Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 9.

27 a rather stark military portrait, and the other a lush mythological exercise in the transformative power of love. In 2005, Elizabeth Cropper (author of the most thorough consideration of the

Halberdier) wrote that the Pontormo portrait and the Pygmalion and Galatea “must have been thematically related, yet the full implication of the connection remains enigmatic.”71 More recently, during the 2010-11 Bronzino exhibition in Florence, Antonio Natali echoed the complaint, remarking: “it is hard to say what links the myth of Pygmalion to the young man depicted in front of the corner of an abstract rampart.”72

This chapter is the first of a two-part study that interprets the Pygmalion and Galatea as entirely concinnous with Pontormo’s Halberdier. In this chapter and the next, Cavalcanti’s oration provides a continuous thread. The language and themes that dominate his speech neatly mirror those in Bronzino’s painting, tying the Pygmalion and Galatea to its historical moment and proving its fitness as a cover for Pontormo’s military portrait.73 The pair of paintings and

Cavalcanti’s discourse each reflect the priorities and atmosphere of the republic during the Siege.

The full implication of the link between the Francesco Guardi and the Pygmalion and Galatea lies in the capacity of the Ovidian story, in Bronzino’s hands, to convey a patriotic—and specifically partisan—message.

71 Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” (2005), 234.

72 Antonio Natali, “Bronzino’s Early Years,” 50.

73 For Cavalcanti, see Claudio Mutini, “Bartolomeo Cavalcanti” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 22 (Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana,1979). Any personal relationship between Bronzino and Cavalcanti is as yet undiscovered, although the men must have shared several acquaintances. In the 1530s, when Cavalcanti was a member of the scholarly community of republican exiles in Padua, the two men were connected through friends like Benvenuto Varchi. Later, in the 1550s, Bronzino completed a pair of portraits of Pierantonio di Francesco Bandini (banker to the Florentine nation in Rome) and his wife Cassandra, which—it has not yet been noted—are in fact images of Cavalcanti’s daughter and son-in-law.

28

This first chapter takes as its focus the relationship between Pygmalion and his statue, identified by her pose and iconography as the goddess Venus. The divine love exhibited by the sculptor is read as a display of Guardi’s own sentiments, and—in contrast to previous studies— interpreted as a positive, motivating force. In her role as a source of heavenly inspiration and encouragement for Florentine young men, Venus proves especially well suited for Guardi’s admiration, and moreover carries a martial reputation entirely appropriate to the circumstances of the Siege. By reevaluating the role of Venus in Bronzino’s painting we can restore the panel’s internal and external coherence, finally offering a meaningful connection between the Pygmalion and the portrait it was designed to accompany.

I.

Book X of ’s Metamorphoses recounts the tale of Pygmalion and Galatea: that of a sculptor overwhelmed with love for a statue of his own creation.74 The beauty and purity of his ivory Galatea having left Pygmalion dissatisfied with living women, he sacrifices a heifer on

Venus’s feast day in the goddess’ honor, and, in his desperation, beseeches her to find him a maiden companion to rival the statue’s charms. Aware that Pygmalion’s true love is for the statue itself, Venus acknowledges his request with three bright flares upon her altar, where the heifer burns. Returning to his workshop, Pygmalion’s devotion to the goddess is rewarded by

Galatea’s transformation, under the sculptor’s caresses, from solid ivory into living flesh.

Bronzino’s painting elides these several events into a single moment of dawning vitality. The initial prayer, the corresponding flames, and Galatea’s metamorphosis appear in unison in the

Pygmalion and Galatea, where the living woman has yet to step down from her stony plinth.

74 Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X, lines 238-297. The name “Galatea” as applied to Pygmalion’s sculpture is a later addition of unknown origin. See Currie, “Secularised Sculptural Imagery, 239, n.14.

29

Despite the perceived difficulty of isolating a specific link between the Pygmalion story and Pontormo’s portrait, the myth provides fruitful material for reflection upon the Halberdier.

The tale draws attention to the boundaries between life and art, making it an appropriate choice for the subject of a portrait cover. As a comment upon the Halberdier, the Pygmalion and

Galatea follows established Renaissance literary modes, performing a visual encomium to the art of painting, and—more importantly—to Pontormo’s mastery of the genre of portraiture.

Cinquecento writers regularly celebrated images for their seeming nearness to life, a type of praise in the tradition of sonnets by Petrarch. Like the portrait of the poet’s beloved Laura, many an image was described as being divided from the living only by lack of speech.75 When

Pygmalion’s statue comes to life, Ovid’s story allows us to envision such a transformation come to pass.76 Attempts to rationalize the association of the Francesco Guardi with its purported cover have often focused on this and other aspects of Bronzino’s painting that seem to participate in the period’s common artistic tropes. As the painted representation of sculpture, for example, and the re-creation in paint of a poetic narrative, the Pygmalion and Galatea engages in the

75 Petrarch responds to Simone Martini’s painting in “Per mirar Policleto a prova fiso” and “Quando giunse a Simon l’alto concetto,” Canzoniere 77-78, in which he envies the happiness of Pygmalion, which might have been his, had Simone endowed the Laura with voice and mind: “Quando giunse a Simon l’alto concetto / ch’a mi nome gli pose in man lo stile, / s’avesse dato a l’opera gentile / colla figura voce ed intelletto. / di sospir molti mi sgombrava il petto / ch ciò ch’altri ha più caro a me fan vile, / però ch’altri ha più caro a me fan vile, / però che ‘n vista ella si mostra umile / promettendomi pace ne l’aspetto.” “Ma poi ch’i’ vengo a ragionar colei, / benignamente assai par che m’ascolte: / se responder savesse a’ deti miei! / Pigmalion, quanto lodar ti déi / de l’imagine tua, / se mille volte / n’avesti quell ch’i’ sol una vorrei.” J.B. Trapp, “Petrarch’s Laura: The Portraiture of an Imaginary Beloved,” JWCI 64 (2001): 55-192, 99.

76 Vasari’s Lives are filled with depictions lacking only breath, or that seem to be alive. Describing Bronzino’s portraits of Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia Pucci (c. 1535- 40), Vasari remarks that the couple are “tanto naturali che paiono vivi veramente, e che non manchi loro se non lo spirito.” Vasari (Milanesi), VII, 595.

30 paragone, an intellectual debate concerning the relative merits of the various arts.77 The subject of Bronzino’s painting invokes these themes, but in Bronzino’s version of the tale, Galatea’s metamorphosis is relevant beyond generic paradigms.

Bronzino’s painting adheres only loosely to Ovid’s tale. The foreground of the image is a well-defined, stage-like area set upon smooth, ruddy earth. This space conflates workshop and temple: the sculptor’s tools rest upon a rustic wooden table, while an ornate bronze urn is partially visible behind a large, stone altar. Topped by a fiery pinnacle, the altar dominates the central axis of the image, dividing the left and right sides of the painting. The figures of

Pygmalion and Galatea are set in the immediate foreground, in front and to either side of the altar.

Galatea stands at left in a relaxed yet uncompromised contrapposto. With one hand she clutches a peach-colored drapery to her waist; the other lightly touches her sloping shoulder above her breast.

A bright light enters the frame from the left, casting deep shadows across the smooth ground and creating areas of stark contrast on Galatea’s body as she twists to look out at the viewer. At right, Pygmalion kneels before her, caught in the glare that seems almost to emanate from the statue herself. The ochre foreground opens out into a richly colored landscape, where rolling hills and distant peaks rise high into a dawn horizon. Rosy morning light informs the palette of Galatea’s drapery, while Pygmalion’s tunic echoes the marine tones of the lingering night sky and the deep teal of the farthest mountains. The relationship between altar and figures remains unclear, both in terms of space and narrative. The altar’s size and position are difficult

77 For an example of this approach, see Currie, “Secularised Sculptural Imagery.” See also Cropper, "L'arte cortigiana,” 97.

31 to read: its recessive elements tilt at a confusing angle, to a destabilizing effect.78 The heifer seems too large for her support, and the towering sacrificial blaze has no impact on the lighting of the foreground scene.79 These visual disruptions undermine the narrative, implying that a straightforward retelling of the Ovidian story is not the painter’s goal. Finally, though

Pygmalion’s kneeling figure is bent in a pose of worship, he appears entirely oblivious to the altar. His attention is instead directed at radiant Galatea, who towers over him, her height accentuated by the rocky pedestal upon which she stands.

Balanced on one knee, hands clutched in a gesture of supplication, the enraptured sculptor gazes up at Galatea in open-mouthed awe. His worshipful figure is largely derived from a drawing by Pontormo—a composition originally intended for the depiction of Saint Francis in the Pucci Altarpiece (Madonna and Child with Saints) at the Florentine Church of San Michele

Visdomini [fig. 1.3].80 That Bronzino’s Pygmalion depends upon a work by Pontormo is unsurprising: Bronzino worked closely with Pontormo throughout the 1520s, and often utilized drawings by his teacher.81 Elizabeth Pilliod has stressed the collaborative intimacy that existed between the two artists in the late 1520s, noting that Pontormo supplied drawings for “every one of [Bronzino’s] first works of art,” in an exchange that was at its height at the end of the

78 Maurice Brock has proposed that the vertical edge of the altar in the Pygmalion recalls the angle of the bastion behind Guardi in the Halberdier, creating a kind of visual logic to the pairing. Brock, Bronzino, 52.

79 Michael Cole has considered this altar's form in terms of its suitability for its pagan function— the rite of sacrifice. “Cellini’s Blood,” The Art Bulletin 81, no. 2 (June., 1999): 215-235, 226.

80 Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe (6744F recto), black chalk, heightened with white. On the drawing, see Janet Cox-Rearick, “Bronzino as Draftsman,” 22, and Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo. A Catalogue Raisonné with Notes on the Paintings, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964). vol. 1, 133 (cat. no. 48); vol. 2, fig. 54

81 Cox-Rearick, “Bronzino as Draftsman,” 22.

32 decade.82 Pontormo completed his Pucci Altarpiece in 1518, more than a decade previous, yet the St. Francis drawing (or a version of it) was apparently still readily available in the painter’s workshop.83

In the case of the Pygmalion and Galatea, the selection of specific artistic precedents is neither arbitrary, nor purely aesthetic. In its dependence upon Pontormo’s St. Francis,

Bronzino’s Pygmalion refers explicitly to the namesake of Pontormo’s portrait subject,

Francesco Guardi. This reference has led certain scholars to see in Pygmalion’s figure an allegorical reference to Francesco Guardi.84 Bronzino’s Galatea also relies upon a drawing by

Pontormo, in this case a study of Venus in the Uffizi (341F) [fig.1.4].85 As with the St. Francis, this figural repetition appears especially meaningful, because further references to Venus appear liberally throughout the painting. Diverse elements repeatedly remind the viewer of her consequence, not only as the powerful agent of the specific metamorphoses represented, but also within a broader context of Florentine moralizing mythology.

In the last two decades it has become increasingly common in Bronzino scholarship to treat the figure of Galatea as a dual representation, simultaneously depicting both Pygmalion’s statue and the goddess Venus herself.86 The conflation originates in the figure’s pose, which,

82 Elizabeth Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, 44.

83 Graham Smith, “Bronzino and Dürer,” in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 119, no. 895 (Oct., 1977): 708-710, 709 n. 9.

84 Brock, Bronzino, 57. Cox-Rearick, “Bronzino as Draftsman,” 22.

85 Uffizi 341F. Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo, cat. 15, fig. 20. Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea” (2005), 236.

86 The most recent study devoted to Venus imagery in the Pygmalion is Cropper, “‘Heu vicit Venus.’ See also Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea” (2010), where she describes the statue as having been carried out “per mano di Venere e in Venere,”—a change enacted by Venus, and into Venus (76). Although interest in the Venus symbolism seems to have grown in recent years, 33 like Pontormo’s drawing, is consistent with classical and classicizing venus pudica types.87 By thus endowing his Galatea with the conspicuous form of Venus, Bronzino diverges from the

Ovidian account, instead aligning his painting with an earlier version of the Pygmalion story, a variant first attributed to the Hellenistic author Philostephanus of Cyrene. Though the original text is lost, later Christian sources report their dependence upon Philostephanus’ report.88

Arnobius (c. AD 300) writes:

Philostephanus states in his Cypriaca that Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, fell in love with an image of Venus, as if it were a woman. It was regarded as holy and venerated by the Cyprians from ancient times.89

Visual evidence identifies Bronzino’s feminine figure as Venus; Philostephanus’ version of the myth accommodates this artistic choice. the idea is not new. Janet Cox-Rearick noted the connection to Pontormo’s Venus pudica in 1964 (Drawings of Pontormo, cat 15, fig. 20). In 1998, Paul Barolsky characterized the painting as depicting Pygmalion “filled with love, praying to the very goddess of love” (“Looking at Venus: A Brief History of Erotic Art,” Arion 7, no. 2 [Fall 1999]: 93-117, 94). This description is consistent with Vasari’s record of the painting as a depiction of “Pigmalione, che fa orazione a Venere” (Vasari [Milanesi], VI, 275).

87 Currie, “Secularised Sculptural Imagery,” 241.

88 Arnobius (Adversus Nationes VI, 22) and (Protrepticus 17, 31). Helen H. Law, “The Name Galatea in the Pygmalion Myth,” The Classical Journal 27, no. 5 (Feb., 1932): 337-342. See also Patricia Salzman-Mitchell, “A Whole out of Pieces: Pygmalion’s Ivory Statue in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” Arethusa 41, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 291-311, 291-293; Victor Stoichi , The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock, translated by Alison Anderson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008) 7-9.

89 “Philostephanus in Cypriacis auctor est, Pygmalionem regem Cypri simulacrum Veneris, quod sanctitatis apud Cyprios et religionis habebatur antiquae” (Stoichi , Pygmalion Effect, 8). To my knowledge, other scholars have not connected the painting to Philostephanus’ tale, although it specifically describes Pygmalion’s statue as a representation of Venus. Although I cannot speak to Bronzino’s knowledge of Arnobius, the patristic writer was certainly known in the Renaissance. Erasmus, for example, printed an edition in 1522. See Eileen Bloch, “Erasmus and the Froben Press: the Making of an Editor,” The Library Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Apr., 1965): 109- 120, 119. This text is connected to the Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli by Karla Langedijk in “Baccio Bandinelli’s Orpheus: A Political Message,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz 20, no. 1 (1976): 33-52, 46.

34

In the Pygmalion and Galatea, Bronzino’s erudite manipulation of the symbolism of

Venus recalls both ancient and renaissance commentary. His treatment will be shown to demonstrate an acquaintance with poets, filtered through the Tuscan poetry of Petrarch and

Dante, and the neoplatonic philosophy of late fifteenth-century Florence, consistent with poetic references to the goddess made by other Florentine artists and writers. Though a survey of all the potentially relevant poetic material is beyond the scope of this study, a useful way of fixing the painting’s literary locus is to begin by examining the heavens, where a single star glimmers in the dawn sky.

Visible at the upper edge of the painting, above Galatea’s right shoulder and just below the frame, this morning star helps to establish Venus’s role within the painting. The planet

Venus, when it appears in the morning, is called Lucifer, and distinguished from its evening appellation: Vesperus (or Hesperus).90 The binary nature of the planet parallels the split identity of the goddess, composed of two complementary entities embodying celestial and terrestrial love.91 Cristoforo Landino’s Disputationes Camaldulenses, a famous late fifteenth-century commentary upon the Aeneid elaborates upon this distinction, with particular reference to

Virgil’s epic.92 Landino explains that the two Venuses reflect two components of the character of man. The first Venus, who is “born of heaven,” guides mortal thoughts towards

90 Cristoforo Landino, Disputationes Camaldulensis (c. 1472), trans. Thomas H. Stahel, “Cristoforo Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid: Books III and IV of the Camaldolese Disputations” (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1968), 71-2.

91 The theory is widespread in the sixteenth century. For example, Vincenzo Cartari writes: “fu anche un Venere celeste, dalla quale veniva quel puro, e sincero amore, che in tutto è alieno dal congiungimento de i corpi: & un’altra ve ne fu detta populare, & commune, che faceva l’amore, d’onde viene la generatione humana.” Cartari, Le imagini con la spositione de I Dei de gli antichi. Raccolte per Vincenzo Cartari (Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1556), 395.

92 For a study and translation, see Stahel, op. cit.

35 contemplation of the divine, while the second Venus, attached to the spirit of the world, inspires sexual desire. “Wherefore each [of these Venuses],” he notes, “is properly called love: inasmuch as one is the desire of contemplating, the other of begetting, beauty.”93

Bronzino’s painting reflects this literary tradition positing the dual nature of love.94

Venus appears twice in the Pygmalion and Galatea, first as the beloved statue, and once again in stone upon the altar, as a lively decorative figure “carved” in high relief, accompanied by her consort Mars. In one hand she clasps the golden apple, a reference to the judgment of Paris. Her victory in that contest is alluded to again on the front of the altar, where an inscription—HEV

VI[NCIT] VEN-VS (“alas, Venus was victorious”)—bears witness to her triumph, catalyst of the

Trojan war.95

The painter’s erudite humor has been cited to explain these witty contrasts of vivacity, hard materials, and flesh.96 But this sensibility does not alone account for Bronzino’s unusual iconographic choices. Nor are they simply reflective of his intellectual interest in the paragone

93 Landino in Stahel, “Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid,” 61-2. Landino’s source on this topic is ’s Symposium. Landino’s student —the authority on the subject— discusses the two Venuses in the second speech (section VII) of his Commentary on the “Symposium.” See Sears Reynolds Jayne, Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium. The Text and a Translation, (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1944), esp. 141-2.

94 This would not be the first time that Bronzino turned to Landino any medieval sources made available via Landino for his mythological subjects. Antonio Geremicca points out that in the Apollo and Marsyas (c. 1530-32), instead of Ovid, Bronzino incorporates a alternative version of the tale that the painter could have read in Landino’s commentary on Dante—which I propose as an important influence for the Pygmalion and Galatea. See Geremicca, Bronzino, 99-100.

95 Cropper, “L’arte cortigiana,” 98-9.

96 Barolsky, “Looking at Venus,” 94.

36 debate.97 Bronzino’s learned mythological references carry direct ideological implications as well.

The city of Troy, and the figure of Paris in particular, are equated in Renaissance allegories with vice and moral lassitude.98 “For it is possible,” Landino explains, “to interpret

Troy as that first [state] of nature in which corporeal pleasures chiefly thrive.”99 Landino further argues that during Paris’ interaction with Venus, the shepherd’s decision is driven by base sexual desire. Similarly in Petrarch’s Triumph of Love, the poet blames Paris’ first sight of the goddess’ beautiful face for the raging tempests that shortly thereafter overturned the world.100 Bronzino encapsulates this earthly and misguided love in the decoration of the altar, where the inscription laments Paris’s choice.

These elements have led scholars to interpret the Pygmalion and Galatea as belonging to a genre of images celebrating the power of sensual love. In a recent article, Elizabeth Cropper draws parallels between Bronzino’s painting and the more famous Florentine treatments of the

97 As the painted representation of sculpture, and the re-creation in paint of a poetic narrative, the Pygmalion and Galatea engages in the paragone, an intellectual debate concerning the relative merits of the various arts. For a study that focuses on this element, see Currie, “Secularised Sculptural Imagery,” 237-253; See also Cropper, "L'arte cortigiana,” 97.

98 It appears as such in treatments by, for example, Petrarch and Boccaccio, among many others. See Craig Kallendorf, “Cristoforo Landino’s Aeneid and the Humanist Critical Tradition,” Renaissance Quarterly 36 (1983): 519-546, esp. 536-7.

99 Landino in Stahel, “Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid,” 66.

100 In his hypothesis of two Venuses, Landino diverges from the tradition of Petrarch and Boccaccio, who link Venus with the dissolute love that brings about the downfall of Troy. (Kallendorf, “Landino’s Aeneid”, 537). Kallendorf explains that Landino’s division of Venus into two entities is reliant upon Plato’s Phaedrus (266A-B) and Symposium (180D-E), and is present in Bernardus Silvestrus, and Marsilio Ficino’s commentary to Plato’s Symposium (Kallendorf, loc. cit.).

37 subject of “amor vincit omnia.”101 She focuses on the goddess’s placatory ability, illustrated in such works as the “Mars and Venus” panels by Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo [fig. 1.5], where the goddess of love appears, having overcome Mars, god of war. He slumbers, spent, while peace reigns and putti make sport with his armor. For Cropper, the Pygmalion and Galatea participates in this tradition, and expresses the desire for peace. She relates the painting to

Lucretius’ de Rerum Natura, in which the union of Mars and Venus results in the birth of

Harmony.102 As the cover for the Halberdier, she argues, the painting demonstrates Guardi’s

“hope that Venus, whose victory in the Judgment of Paris led to war, would now bring peace to

Florence.”103 But the wish articulated by Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea is not purely pacific. Instead, it expresses a desire for a peace achieved through republican victory over

Florence’s Imperial and Medici aggressors.

II.

In addressing the role of Venus in Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea, it is important to recognize that in the Italian Renaissance tradition, Venus does not always appear as a solely sensuous and placatory deity. She can also be a warlike goddess, the special protectress of those engaging in noble combat (real or allegorical). For example, Venus appears in a drawing by

Marco Zoppo, datable to the 1460s or ’70s, standing nude, holding spear and shield, with a

101 Cropper, “‘Heu vicit Venus.’” The article develops ideas proposed in Cropper’s earlier treatments of the painting, such as the Ottawa (2005) and Florence (2010) catalogue entries, in Pontormo’s Halberdier (1997), and in “L’arte cortigiana” (2000).

102 Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” (2010), 78. De Rerum Natura 1.29-40. The result of their union will be the birth of the goddess Harmony.

103 Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea” (2005), 236.

38 breastplate resting at her feet [fig. 1.6].104 Instead of leaving her companion’s arms to be the playthings of her cupids, she has taken up the arms herself. Thus fortified, she becomes Venus

Armata, also called Venus Victrix, a goddess with an ancient pedigree and a strong Florentine legacy.105

Vincenzo Cartari’s 1556 Imagini de’ Mitologia Dei notes that the image of Venus Victrix particularly “denotes the courage shown by the Lacedaemonian women against the besieging

Messenians,” when they “bravely defended their city.”106 This story helps explain why the

Florentines might turn to Venus for salvation in 1530. The myth portrays an unlikely military victory in which, though the special intervention of Venus, a besieged city triumphs over her enemies. When the Lacedaemonian men were fighting a battle at Messenia, the Messenians launched a surprise attack against the now unprotected Sparta. But their design did not succeed.

With their men off at war, the Lacedaemonian women themselves donned armor and, against all odds, successfully defeated the besieging Messenians. The women, adds Cartari, “not only defended their city and the surrounding countryside against the sack, but also routed their

104 Marco Zoppo, Venus Victrix, c. 1465-74(?). Pen and brown ink on vellum, British Museum [1920,0214.1.25].

105 On her iconography, see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958); Rudolf Wittkower, “Transformations of Minerva in Renaissance Imagery,” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2, no. 3 (1939): 194-205; Salvatore Settis, “Citarea ‘su una impresa di bronconi’,” JWCT 34 (1971): 135-177. Settis attributes to her “una cittadinanza precisamente fiorentina” (150).

106 Cartari, Le imagini. A plate accompanying Cartari’s entry on Venus Victrix includes the following caption: “Imagine di Venere armata, di Venere vittrice, & di Venere in ceppi dinotante la fermezza, che deve essere nelli maritati & amanti, dinota ancora questa imagine il valore delle Donne Lacedemonie contro i Meßenij, che andavano à saccheggiar la loro Città, da esse valorosamente difesa.”

39 enemies, forcing them to retreat.”107 The victorious Lacedaemonians commemorated the event by erecting a statue of the Venus Victrix and building a temple in her honor.108 In 1530,

Florence was similarly under siege, and, like the Lacedaemonians, at a desperate disadvantage.

Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea evokes this bellicose Venus: bringer of victory, and champion of the besieged. The panel’s landscape setting locates the Pygmalion myth in 1530

Florence, currently suffering under the joint Medici and Imperial attack. The painting’s rolling countryside and distant hills portray the lands surrounding Florence, which included, Cropper notes, the property of the Guardi family.109 The landscape, rendered in saturated tones that belie its barren state, depicts the devastation wreaked upon the Florentine countryside as a result of the fighting.110 Luciano Berti connects the landscape’s lifelessness with records that, in late

107 Cartari, citing Lactantius as his source, writes that the Messenians had come to plunder the entire surrounding area, thinking they could take the city easily, since the men of the area had gone away. But their design did not succeed. “Come scrive Lattantio, che mentre i Lacedemonij aßediavano Meßene, i Messinij usciti di nascosto andarono per saccheggiare Lacedemone, e per depredare tutto il paese all’interno, credendo di poterlo fare facilmente, poi che tutti gli huomini di Guerra del luoco erano andati all’assedio. Ma non successe loro il disegno. Imperoche le donne Lacedemonie, che questo intesero, armatesi tutte quelle, che ciò erano buone, e andate contra gli nimici, non solamente difesero la città, e il paese dal sacco, ma quelli ancora mandarono in rota, e sforzarono a ritornarse.” Cartari, Le imagini, 397.

108 The story appears in Lactantius: Divine Institutes, 1, 20, 29-32. It includes a bit of naughty mistaken identity comedy when the Lacedaemonian soldiers return to find their wives clad in armor, but Cartari is clearly solely interested in the bravery of the women, and tells the story quite seriously. Lactantius, Divine Institutes, trans. and ed. by Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 106. The myth is briefly outlined in F. Graf, “Women, War, and Warlike Divinities,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik: 245- 254, 248.

109 Cropper “Pygmalion and Galatea” (2010), 76.

110 Brock, Bronzino, 52; Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea” (2005) notes the “bare landscape, handful of dead or dying trees.” The “weapons of war…have brought about the destruction of the landscape” p. 236. The same is noted in the 2010 catalogue (76). Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 96. “This bare landscape, its few trees blasted by powder, as they are in Schön’s Siege of Münster, and the familiar hills on the horizon clearly define the surroundings of Florence devastated by the siege. In those hills was the Guardi’s farm, La Piazzuola, from which 40

September 1529, Leo X had ordered the surrounding Tuscan countryside burned.111 In a small passage to the far left of the painting, tiny figures can been seen carrying water, replicating the process used to extinguish fires during the siege.112 Bronzino’s Florence urgently needs Venus’s aid.

The painting thus resonates with Bartolomeo Cavalcanti’s military oration of 1530, with which this chapter began. Cavalcanti urges his Florentine auditors to save themselves by emulating the ancient republics. “Need I name Athens?” he asks. “Shall I praise Sparta to you?

Celebrate Rome?” 113 He sets these cities as exemplars, extolling not only the bravery of their citizens but also their style of government. He applauds the Spartan king Lycurgus for establishing a balanced government through the institution of the senate—and thus, according to

Plutarch and Plato, successfully countering the twin threats of tyranny and anarchy.114 The parallel for Florentine republicans, plagued by these same fears, would have been obvious. But the “antichi savi,” as Cavalcanti calls them, knew that without arms, their liberty could not be maintained. Cavalcanti explains that only the prudent arming of their citizens enabled the ancient republics to defend their free state from its enemies, to acquire great power and immortal glory.115 Declaring Florence to be modeled after the ancient republics, Cavalcanti exhorts his

Francesco and his family were separated by war.” The print is reproduced in Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 35.

111 Luciano Berti, Pontormo e il suo tempo (Florence: Banca Toscana, 1993), 167.

112 Ibid., 166-168.

113 “Vi lodi Sparta?” Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 15.

114 , “Life of Lycurgus,” in The Parallel Lives, trans. by Bernadotte Perrin, Vol. I (London: Loeb, 1914), 221; Plato, Laws, 691E . Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 28.

115 Ibid., 14-15: “che li antichi savi hanno giudicato il nome di città quelle non meritare, le quali, nell’altre parti loro bene ordinate, non sono per sé stesse sufficienti, mancando delle proprie 41

Florentine listeners to “continue in the likeness of those bold and courageous citizens,” and “thus to demonstrate to the present centuries that ancient valor is not spent, but with great glory reignited in you.”116

This stirring call to arms is directed at those who, like the Lacedaemon women, might normally disdain to fight—a group that included Francesco Guardi, the subject Pontormo’s

Halberdier.117 Cavalcanti’s audience consisted largely of young Florentine men from good families: the so-called “bella gioventù,” who were well educated, but not trained for war. “Your delicate bodies,” he says, “were nurtured in civil idleness, and are unused to heavy arms. Your intellects have not been turned to the art of military discipline.”118 His listeners constituted a citizen militia recruited to protect the besieged republic from the allied forces of Emperor and

Pope. Since its reestablishment in 1527, the republic had called for the creation of such a militia as had been disbanded by the Medici; at the start of the Siege, sons of the office-holding class, young men between the ages of 18 and 34, were called to serve. As the military situation grew

armi, a difendere la loro libertà. Onde noi veggiamo quelle, in cui il bel componimento della republica con la bene ordinata milizia fu bene fortificato, non solo aver potuto il loro quieto a libero stato da i suoi nimici difendere e lungo tempo mantanere, ma ancora co ‘l valor di quelle acquistare potenzia grandissima e conseguire gloria immortale.”

116 “Seguendo i vestigij de i lor forti, & valorosi cittadini, havete saputo mostrare a i presenti secoli, che l’antico valore non è gia spento, ma in voi con gloria grandissima del nome vostro si raccende” (Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 15). Cavalcanti’s parallel between Florence and Sparta is hardly new. See, for example, Dante, Purgatorio VI:139.

117 Hale, Florence and the Medici, 365: “In republics…especially in Florence…it took special crisis and special pleading to persuade the citizens out of their conviction that though arms were all very well in their place, that place was in the hands of others. [….] In the greatest crisis of all, the siege of the last republic, the theme was state and restated with the greatest urgency.”

118 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 15.

42 more dire, restrictions on age and class would gradually be lessened, until the entire male population was urged to join the fight.119

Inspiring young men to fight thus took on a vital importance during the Siege, and orations like Cavalcanti’s were designed to meet this need. An ordinance of 1528 prescribed that members of the militia attend public discourses, to be held in each of the four quartieri of the city, in order that traditional civic values might be reinforced.120 The events were accompanied by parades, pomp, and military finery, in ceremonies modeled after those put into place in 1506, during the previous iteration of the republic. J. R. Hale explains that when the Florentine militia was first established under the gonfaloniere Piero Soderini, “special provision was made for church parades in the course of which the citizen troops were to be harangued on the importance of combining arms with trade or study.”121 Such demonstrations were necessary because, “in

Florence, where the state was not organized for war, concern with morale was firmly linked with concern for the constitution.”122

Cavalcanti’s speech at Santo Spirito was remembered as the most successful of these orations: contemporary chroniclers record his remarkable eloquence and persuasiveness. The

119 Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Cornell: Cornell UP, 1991), 532-3.

120 Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence, 296. Following a practice applied to the rural militia since 1506, the ordinance of 1528 had prescribed that the swearing-in ceremonies in the various quarters of the city should be supplemented by a public discourse designed to animate the civic loyalty and spirit of self-sacrifice of the new recruits. (See Segni, Istorie Fiorentine, 57). The occasion and the traditions of civic rhetoric imposed some familiar themes upon the speakers: the obligation of citizens to defend liberty with their own hands; the impulse of all free men to resist servitude at the risk of life itself; and the undying fame to be won by the brave.

121 Hale, Renaissance War Studies (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), 365.

122 Ibid., 381.

43 speech was printed, reprinted, and widely read.123 Tasked with convincing his refined audience to take up weapons to defend the republic, he appealed to them by personifying the republic as a lovely woman dependent upon their aid:

Now, after many years, our much desired liberty has been restored, and our just and legitimate government revived. It would however be an unstable and imperfect republic, very weak, and with its freedom insecure, if her civic classes were not fortified with military graces. […] Thus is our republic reborn in a beautiful body, but one certainly fragile and ephemeral […]. The wise ancients knew that a city was not worthy to be called such … if her citizens were lacking their own arms, with which to defend their liberty.” 124

Young Florentines like Francesco Guardi were the explicit target of Cavalcanti’s harangue, and in Pontormo’s Halberdier, he wears precisely the costume dictated by the 1528 ordinance.125

Guardi’s pole arm, too, is just like those mentioned in reports from the event at Santo Spirito, listed among the weapons carried by the armed audience.126 He was of an age to have attended,

123 Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina vol. II, 194: “ [Baccio] fu molto lodato. L’orazione si stampò […] e molti ancora oggi la celebrano in Firenze per cosa rarissima […] trovandosi stampata, ognuno che vuole la può leggere.” See also Segni, Istorie Fiorentine, Book II, 57, and sources in notes 62 and 63, above.

124 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 13-14.

125 The most insightful responses to the Halberdier—foremost among them the studies of Elizabeth Cropper and Luciano Berti—connect the portrait to exactly the type of Florentine young men who would have been in attendance at Cavalcanti’s oration. Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 68: “he wears the very outfit of giubbone, slashed breech-hose, and beret with medal and feather that was prescribed for the militia by the Signoria in the legislation of November 1528; the sword was prescribed for nighttime duty.” Cropper is uninterested in the orations, instead focusing up on the military garb as proof of the connection between the Halberdier and republican Davidian imagery.

126 The so-called “halberd” which lends the painting its name is in fact a pike—such as were carried by the men in the audience, according to Segni’s report. Segni, Istorie fiorentine, 56: erano armate a proporzione di picche, di corsalette, e d’archibusi con si belle arme, e in tant’abbondanza, che la vista di esse, e la considerazione della spesa, arrecava agli animi somma maraviglia e diletto e gran confidenza.” Segni adds that the speeches were organized so that everybody could attend (57).

44 and his family home lay within the borders of the quartiere sending its young men to the oration at Santo Spirito.127

Guardi’s actual attendance, however, is less important than the popular motivations that shaped Cavalcanti’s speech, and which offer a mode of approach for the Pygmalion and

Galatea.128 The subject of Pontormo’s Halberdier is a little too young, a little too finely dressed to be mistaken for a man about to enter brutal combat. But his presentation is perfectly in line with the rousing republican atmosphere that dominated events like Cavalcanti’s oration at Santo

Spirito.129 His depiction is thoroughly topical, relating in every way to the expectations placed upon the Florentine youth at the time of the Siege.

Yet while the association of the Halberdier with the Siege and the republican bella gioventù is uniformly accepted, the Pygmalion and Galatea is most often discussed as being at odds with the painting it was designed to enclose. Some scholars presume that painting and cover carry entirely diverse meanings, with the Pygmalion described as providing an “antidote” to the partisan content of the Halberdier.130 For certain of these scholars, this perceived

127 On the location of the Guardi property, see Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 76-79. The city was divided into four quartieri for the speeches, given at four churches: Santo Spirito, Santa Croce, , and San Giovanni. See Trexler, Public Life, 533n.

128 In Public Life, Trexler examines the oration as a public spectacle demonstrative of the most significant elements of Florentine republican culture, in whose “twilight,” “the brilliant, frightful, and dangerous youth of Florence saved this city” (533). At the event, he writes, “Florence at large watched its most powerful confraternity perform the most sacred, and cunning rite. From the words of the orator they would hear the secrets that were to save the city, and in the disciplined action of the armed youth they sensed a dedication that made the city invulnerable” (535).

129 Cropper describes him as “a virtuous young man who stands guard at a bastion, armed and ready to hold his ground on his native soil…one of the bella gioventù gallantly guarding the walls of his native city” (Portrait of a Halberdier, 75).

130 Liana de Girolami Cheney and Sonia Michelotti Bonetti, “Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea: l’antica bella maniera,” in Discovery Journal (2006): 5-10, 2

45 discrepancy depends on an apparent misreading of Vasari’s chronology. Liana Cheney (quoting

Brock) writes that “after the fall of the Republic, this type of portrait alluding to ‘bella gioventù ready to die to defend the liberty of the city,’ was compromising, thus concealing it with a cover would be simpler and safer for the patron rather than destroying the painting. As Vasari notes,

Bronzino painted the cover after the siege of 1530.”131 But Vasari does no such thing. Indeed,

Vasari distinctly places both Pontormo’s Halberdier and the Pygmalion and Galatea during the conflict, bookended by references to the Siege:

Ritrasse [Pontormo], nel tempo dell’assedio di Fiorenza, Francesco Guardi in abito da soldato, che fu opera bellissima: e nel coperchio poi di questo quadro, dipinse Bronzino Pigmalione che fa orazione a Venere. […] Finito l’assedio…132

Furthermore, in the life of Bronzino, Vasari expressly notes that after the conclusion of the Siege, with the peace brokered, the painter left Florence for Pesaro:

Passato poi l’assedio di Firenze e fatto l’accordo, andò [Bronzino] come altrove s’è detto a Pesero…133

Even among those scholars for whom the stylistic evidence and Vasari’s chronology are entirely convincing, the Pygmalion and Galatea is understood in opposition to the militaristic

131 Cheney and Bonetti, loc. cit. Brock writes: “after the fall of the Republic, such a portrait would have been compromising. Better to conceal it, if only with a cover. It would have surely been simpler and safer to destroy it. Since the painting was preserved and hidden, it could be supposed that the young man or his family entourage felt some nostalgia for an exalted era—or a defunct Republic. Vasari, who notes that the cover was painted after the portrait, lets it be clearly understood that it was after the surrender, but he does not provide any precise dating” (Brock, Bronzino, 54). While Vasari is far from precise, the sequence of his report clearly puts the Pygmalion and Galatea during, and not after the Siege.

132 Vasari (Milanesi) VI, 275. “During the time of the Siege of Florence, Pontormo painted Francesco Guardi in the guise of a Halberdier, which was a beautiful work: and on the cover of this painting Bronzino then painted Pygmalion praying to Venus. […] Once the Siege was over…”

133 Vasari (Milanesi) VII, 594-5.: “The Siege being ended and the accord made, Bronzino went, as told elsewhere to Pesaro.”

46

Halberdier. Claudio Strinati writes that “the figure of Pygmalion is set in opposition to that of the soldier, while artistic creativity is contrasted with devastation and death.”134 Cropper has written that in the Pygmalion and Galatea, “Bronzino conveniently eliminated every reference to the part that the young man and his family played in the defense of Florence.”135

Cropper’s reasoning grows out of her reading of Bronzino’s Venus as a placatory deity.136 If, however, we begin by remembering the story of Lacedaemon and that city’s courageous feminine defenders, an entirely different interpretation becomes available. Rather than tempering the sentiment of the Halberdier, the Pygmalion and Galatea partakes of its spirit of bravery and hope. In Cavalcanti’s military oration, he speaks his encouragement in the language of divine love, urging his listeners to “inflame” their hearts in defense of their beloved city.137 It is this rousing and warlike dimension of Venus’ power, rather than her ability to inspire animal lust, that pervades Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea. Interpreted as such, the tone of the painting is far more in keeping with Cropper’s own convincing—and uncompromisingly republican—interpretation of Pontormo’s Portrait of Francesco Guardi.138

134 “Bronzino illustra invece il mito di Pigmalione, re di Cipro e artista, simbolo di pace e castità. La figura di Pigmalione è dunque contrapposto a quella dell’uomo soldato, mentre la creatività artistica si oppone alla devastazione e alla morte.” Strinati, Bronzino, 52.

135 Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” (2005), 234. This statement is surprising, since in 1997 connected the landscape of the Pygmalion with Schön’s Siege of Münster, seeing Bronzino’s trees as “blasted by powder,” the landscape “clearly defin[ing] the surroundings of Florence devastated by the siege.” Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 97.

136 See page 38 notes 101-103 above. Cheney and Bonetti do the same, suggesting that “perhaps Pontormo envisions Francesco Guardi as an image of Mars, the God of War, while Bronzino’s painting relates to Venus, the Goddess of Love, an antidote to Mars and war.” Cheney and Bonetti, “Bronzino’s Pygmalion,” 4.

137 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 15, 24-5.

138 The argument is most fully realized in Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier.

47

III.

Venus appears in the Pygmalion and Galatea not only as a warlike goddess, but also as a divinity especially relevant to Francesco Guardi. Fifteenth century humanist discourse established Venus as the particular benefactress of Florentine young men. She is invoked in

Tuscan literature and art as a divinity distinctively able to lead her followers to unlikely triumph, and celebrated as a goddess uniquely capable of guiding her devotees along life’s just and virtuous path. Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea expresses this regional interpretative model in both composition and sentiment. The painting depicts, at its most essential, the relationship between the enamored sculptor and his statue. Yet, as we have seen, Bronzino has endowed his

Galatea with the features of Venus and has given his Pygmalion the form of St. Francis, namesake of Francesco Guardi. Sculptor and statue become guardsman and goddess. Such an exchange as is depicted in the Pygmalion and Galatea—the dawn encounter between Venus and a young man poised to embark upon a dangerous path, or about to undertake a difficult task—is appropriate to the panel’s wartime context and had several important precedents in the Florentine humanist tradition.

Returning to Cristoforo Landino’s allegorical reading of the Aeneid, we find a discussion of Venus’s dynamic interventions on behalf of her devotees. Landino interprets the arrival of the goddess as an auspicious event for the heroes to whom she appears, auguring success in their future ventures. His exegesis offers a useful model for interpreting the interaction between

Francesco and Venus as represented in the Pygmalion and Galatea.

Particularly significant for Landino is the time of day at which Aeneas and Venus meet— at the first light of dawn. He takes up Virgil’s line setting the scene for her appearance: “iamque

48 jurgis summae surgebat Lucifer Idea / ducebatque diem.”139 The words appear in book two of the Aeneid: “And now above Ida’s topmost ridges the day-star was rising, ushering in the morn.”140 Landino explains that Lucifer, “(the light-bearer, the morning star) is the star of

Venus,” and adds that “it is appropriate, moreover, that […] the star of Venus be seen before the sun, for there arises from it that love of finding the truth [...] which leads in the day; for such a love stimulates the reason, by whose bright light we are able to know the truth. Moreover, it appears from Mount Ida, that is, from beauty.”141

On the left side of Bronzino’s painting, behind where Galatea stands, the horizon is crested by a pink and yellow glow [fig. 1.7]. This dawn light hovering on the horizon is a departure from the Ovidian text, and instead follows closely in the tradition of Florentine accounts of interactions with Venus (or other feminine embodiments of divine love), modeled after Virgil. Dante places his dream encounter with the beautiful and virtuous Leah “in the hour when [Venus] Cytherea, who seems always burning with the fire of love, first shone on the mountain from the east.”142 This meeting is among those which recent writers on Dante, following Charles Speroni, have termed the poet’s “prophetic morning dreams,” a series of encounters in which Dante’s future journey is foreshadowed.143 In fixing the scene at dawn,

139 Virgil, Aeneid, ii. 801-2. Landino in Stahel, “Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid,” 66.

140 Landino in Stahel, op. cit., 71.

141 Ibid.

142 “Ne l’ora, credo, che de l’oriente / prima raggiò nel monte Citerea, / che de foco d’amor par sempre ardente, / giovane e bella in sogno mi parea / donna vedere …” Purg. Xxvii, 94-99. Prose translation by Charles Singleton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

143 Max Marmor, "From Purgatory to the ‘Primavera’: Some Observations on Botticelli and Dante," Artibus et Historiae 24, no. 48 (2003): 199-212, 203-4. Charles Speroni, “Dante’s Prophetic Morning-Dreams,” Studies in Philology 45 (1981): 50-59.

49

Dante alludes to Virgil’s Aeneid, a literary reference later highlighted by Landino, who, in addition to his analysis of Virgil, gave an associated disputation on the works of the Tuscan poet.144

Landino repeatedly draws attention to the parallels between Dante and Virgil, interpreting both epics similarly as allegorical journeys from the terrestrial to the celestial, by way of love.145

In his Comento sopra la Comedia, Landino underscores the role of Venus as Dante’s potent and benevolent guide. He draws attention to the poet’s several references to the goddess, and his repeated use of rhetorical devices that connect the Tuscan epic to that composed by Virgil.146 In particular, Landino argues that by setting Dante’s encounter at the first light of day, the poet wishes to indicate that his pilgrimage is overseen by Venus: “in questo, Dante dimostra, che

Venere celeste lo conduca.”147

Bronzino, whose poetic fluency was formidable, closely follows this Florentine model.148

In his Pygmalion and Galatea, the light emerging from beyond the horizon is reflected on the

144 Landino, Comento sopra la Comedia, ed. P. Procaccioli, 4 vols. (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2001). In the Proemio, he states explicitly his desire to present Dante in dialogue with Virgil. (Procaccioli, i. 219-220.) For the relationship between Dante and Virgil as presented by Landino, see Kallendorf, “Landino’s Aeneid.” See also Manfred Lentzen, Studien zur Dante- Exegese Cristoforo Landinos (Cologne-Vienna: Studi Italiani, 1971), 137-157.

145 Marmor, “From Purgatory to the ‘Primavera,’” 205: “The defining philosophical theme of Landino’s Dante commentary is one that engaged Landino throughout his career: the soul’s moral and spiritual pilgrimage from what Landino called, emulating the ancients, the vita voluptuosa, through the vita activa, to the vita contemplativa. This key theme was also elaborated in Landino’s reading of the Aeneid, first presented in Books III and IV of his Disputationes Camaldulenses, composed around 1472 and published in 1480…he [also] made it a keystone of his commentary on Dante.”

146 Marmor, “From Purgatory to the ‘Primavera’,” 207.

147 Landino in Procaccioli, Comento, 1045, with reference to Purg. I, 19-21.

148 For Bronzino’s literary knowledge and poetic career, see Deborah Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

50 undersides of the clouds, their bellies dusted with the first rosy morning hues. The single star shines golden above Galatea’s shoulder, while one distant mountain, Ida, stands prominent against the background. Adhering to the precedent elaborated by Dante, the mountain is lit brilliantly across its eastern slopes.

In the mode of Virgil and Dante, the Pygmalion and Galatea depicts a dawn encounter with the celestial Venus; in keeping with Landino’s exegesis, the painting similarly implies inspiration to great action. (A fourteenth century manuscript of the Divine Comedy at the

Bodleian depicts one such encounter, complete with Venus, her star, and Taurus in the sky [fig.

1.8.]) Unlike the moralizing context of Petrarch’s Triumph of Love, wherein famous lovers lament Venus’ power as the root of their downfall, Landino credits her strength as source of the noble heroes’ positive motivation.149 He turns away from the moral allegories of Petrarch and

Boccaccio, focusing attention on Venus’ role as benevolent guide, rather than on her potential to inspire ruinous lust. Craig Kallendorf has shown that Landino’s perspective was instead shaped by contemporary Tuscan neoplatonic philosophy, particularly the scholarship of his student,

Marsilio Ficino.150 This influence is evident, according to Kallendorf, in the part Venus plays in guiding the heroes forward in their journeys: “Aeneas’ mother appears in Book II to take him away from the corporal pleasures of Troy and start him on the path to Landino’s summum bonum,” i.e., the rhetorical goal of the Trojan’s quest, and the literal destination of Dante’s pilgrimage to Paradiso.151 Book two of Virgil’s Aeneid concludes just a few lines beyond those

149 The fullest elaboration of Petrarch’s censorious approach to Troy and the Trojans appears in his Rerum Senilium 4.4 and Secretum 180-182. See Kallendorf, “Landino’s Aeneid,” 537.

150 Kallendorf, op. cit., 538n.; Pico della Mirandola also developed a theory of the dual Venuses as distinguishing celestial and earthly visions of beauty (Wind, Pagan Mysteries, 138).

151 “Aeneas’ mother appears in Book II to take him away from the corporal pleasures of Troy and start him on the path to Landino’s summum bonum. In using Venus to extract Aeneas from 51 quoted above, at once closing the scene at Troy and ushering in the new era of Aeneas’ journey to Italy. The final words describe how, with Greek soldiers barricading the gates, and without hope of rescue, Aeneas sets off into the hills, carrying his father on his back.152

Having associated Troy and the unfortunate lover Paris with the earthbound Venus,

Landino sees Aeneas’ departure as an allegory of man’s rejection of profane love in favor of the divine. Dante’s mission is understood in the same vein.153 Venus inspires her young devotees to action, enabling them to undertake heroic tasks. Aeneas’s departure demonstrates, in Landino’s words, that “those who are driven to a knowledge of the truth because they are inflamed with great love, are able to accomplish things with ease.”154 Venus invests Aeneas with prodigious strength in recognition of his devotion to her and the righteousness of his cause, thereby enabling him to achieve success beyond expectation. Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea invokes the goddess in hopes that she will perform a similar feat in the service of Francesco Guardi and his cause.

IV.

The role of Venus in Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea depends upon poetic motifs rooted in fifteenth-century humanist and chivalric ruminations on divine love—material that

the snares of sensuality, Landino turns to the Plato scholarship of Ficino rather than the moral allegory of Petrarch and Boccaccio, because the heavenly Venus is such a useful contribution to the development of his philosophical commentary as a whole.” Kallendorf, “Landino’s Aeneid,” 538n.

152 Virgil, Aeneid, ii. 802-3. “Danaique obsessa tenebant / limina portarum, nec spes opis ulla dabatur. / cessi, et sublato montis genitore petiui”

153 Kallendorf, “Landino’s Aeneid,” 538.

154 Landino in Stahel, “Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid,” 56

52 yields a significant formal precedent for Bronzino’s painting. The literary-philosophical discourses of Landino have been presented here as the source (or manifestation) of important themes present in the painting. These same themes are found in the art and literature associated with Landino’s own circle, including an anonymous late-fifteenth century woodcut that shares several compositional elements with Bronzino’s Pygmalion, but has never before been connected with it.

The image is an illustration designed for one of the most celebrated examples of humanist verse, Angelo Poliziano’s Stanze Cominciate per la Giostra del Magnifico Giuliano de’ Medici, a poem left incomplete upon the author’s death in 1494 [fig. 1.9]. The language of divine love and inspiration—quite similar to that found in Cavalcanti’s republican speech—dominates the poetic material, wherein a noble young Florentine encounters a goddess at dawn, and is rewarded for his devotion by victory in battle. In the print, the hero genuflects before a statue of Venus

Victrix, our bellicose heroine of the besieged.155

Deemed the “most brilliant” of the Florentine humanists, Poliziano was a protégé of

Marsilio Ficino, the scholar mentioned above for the influence exerted by his neoplatonic philosophy on the allegorical treatises of his own teacher, Cristoforo Landino.156 Poliziano’s poem and Bronzino’s painting both respond to the legacy of Landino, and as such their treatment of Venus is highly analogous.157 The relevant passages of Poliziano’s Stanze establish the poem

155 The illustration appears in Book II, accompanying stanzas II, 41- 43. The most relevant article on the topic is Settis, “Citarea.” Although I refer to the image as an illustration, Settis makes a convincing argument that the woodcut should be not be understood as strictly illustrative, but rather as collaborating with the text in the creation of meaning.

156 David Quint, The Stanze of Angelo Poliziano, 2nd edition. (University Park: Penn State UP, 1993), vii.

157 For Poliziano’s relationship to Ficino’s circle, see Christina Storey, “The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Fragment: Ficino, Poliziano, and ‘Le stanze per la giostra’,” The Modern Language 53

(and the attendant woodcut illustration) as an important example of the Florentine tradition upon which Bronzino’s highly literary Pygmalion and Galatea depends.

Poliziano’s Stanze per la Giostra is a fantastic reimagining of past events. Set in 1475, it returns to the time of Giuliano de Medici’s victory in a festival tournament, twenty years before the poem’s first publication.158 In the print, Giuliano kneels before an altar topped by sacred fire and prays for victory in his upcoming joust. In a niche set above the altar, a feminine figure stands dressed in long robes, armed with a spear. An inscription on the front of the altar identifies her as “CITA/REA,” that is, Venus. A caption accompanying the print reiterates the identification: “Iulio’s words to Venus.”159 The illustration is now familiar through a version published in 1513, although the print appeared in other Florentine editions before 1500.160

The basic pictorial organization—genuflecting youth at right, elevated goddess at left, fire burning upon the altar between—is very like that of Bronzino’s Pygmalion, and the

Review 98, no. 3 (Jul., 2003): 602-619. Storey argues that while “the Tuscan tradition of presenting human love poetically as an ennobling force was grounded in general Platonic concepts linking the image of the Beloved to the Beloved’s soul, and so to Beauty itself; this in turn generated the love that causes the lover’s elevation,” earlier Tuscan writers had found their Platonism in the Christian tradition—Poliziano engages with this poetic context as with Ficinian philosophy. Since Bronzino is as engaged as any artist with the Tuscan poetic tradition, the point supports my argument, and may provide a window into Bronzino’s exposure to neoplatonic concepts of divine love (Storey, 610, 612).

158 On the poem’s relationship to historical events and the past in general, see Adrian Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 209. On the poem and its context more generally, see Charles Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s Primavera and Humanist culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992), discussed at length in Chapter 2 of this dissertation.

159 “Parole di Iulio a Venere.” Settis, “Citarea,” 152.

160 Settis, “Citarea,” 135. From Poliziano, Stanze (Florence, 1513), vol. V (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett [2998a]). Aby Warburg, “Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Spring: An Examination of Concepts of Antiquity in the Italian Early Renaissance” (1893): 89- 156, 110-111. Warburg gives the print to Botticelli (Settis, “Citarea,” 139).

54 presentation of the figures is also quite similar. Both goddesses adopt a serpentine contrapposto stance, weight resting on the left leg and the rest of the body balanced accordingly. Each raises her right hand to shoulder height. The male figures each gaze upward in adoration while bent on one knee. Though Bronzino’s hero is certainly derived from Pontormo’s St. Francis, there is nevertheless a noticeable congruity with the angle of Giuliano’s thigh, the bend at his waist, and the yearning tilt of his neck.161

Poliziano’s poem has been the subject of many studies, art historical and literary. Most relevant to this examination of Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea is an essay by Salvatore Settis, in which he identifies the female goddess in the woodcut illustration as Venus Victrix.162 Settis confirms her identify by noting her ability to tender triumph in reward for noble devotion, by her connection with the virtues associated with humanitas, and through her special affiliation with

Florentine young men of the elevated merchant class—that is, the bella gioventù. These qualities help explain the appearance of Venus in Bronzino’s painting, and strengthen the relationship between the portrait of Francesco Guardi and its cover.

An examination of the final portion of Poliziano’s Stanze, read in the context of the woodcut illustration, offers a model for the interpretation of Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea.

The poem is unfinished, ending abruptly before Giuliano’s tournament can take place. The last

161 It may be that the two genuflecting figures have a shared dependence upon another source altogether. For the dependence of Pontormo’s drawing on Dürer’s Prodigal Son, see Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea,” (2010), 76-78; Brock, Bronzino, 57; Smith, “Bronzino and Dürer.” Dürer’s print seems to be datable to the same period as Poliziano’s Stanze, although the exact origin of the anonymous woodcut is unknown. If such were in fact the case, it would not diminish the weight of the relationship between the woodcut and the Pygmalion and Galatea, since the images correspond in several ways.

162 Settis, “Citarea.” On the woodcut see Charles Dempsey, “Portraits and Masks in the Art of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Botticelli, and Politian’s ‘Stanze per la Giostra,’” Renaissance Quarterly 1, no. 1 (Spring, 1999): 1-42, esp. 35-41.

55 stanzas deal with the morning before the joust, beginning with the moment when Giuliano awakens at sunrise from a vivid (and prophetic) dream:

It was the time when dawn approaches, and the air becomes gray where it has been brown; and now Icarus bends down his starry chariot and the moon appears to grow pale: when the dreams reveal what heaven destines for fair Julio (II, 27)163

Here, as in Dante, dawn is the hour of true sight. In his dream, Giuliano has had a vision of the upcoming fight. Poliziano recounts the substance of the vision, in which Giuliano is at first visited by a female embodiment of Glory. Cupid alerts him to Glory’s approach, explaining that only through victory will Giuliano win his beloved Simonetta’s heart.

“Raise, raise your eyes, Julio, to that flame which, like a sun, dazzles you with its bright- ness: there is she [Glory] who inflames lofty minds and removes all baseness from the heart. […] Only a triumphal palm will win [Simonetta] for you (II, 31).164

As Cupid speaks, Glory appears, bringing with her Poetry and History, who too will lend him aid in the joust:

So Cupid was saying, and Glory was already des- cending, flashing about a fierce splendor: Poetry and History flew with her, kindled by her light- ning. With dreadful force, she seemed to carry Julio off to the battlefield to gain victory (II, 32)

163 Quint, Stanze, 81. Original Italian, page 89: “Tempo era quando l’alba s’avicina, / e divine fosca l’aria ove era bruna; / e già ‘l carro stellato Icaro inchina, / e par nel volto scolorir la luna: / quando ciò ch’al bel Iulio el cel destina / mostrono i Sogni, e sua dolce fortuna.”

164 Quint, Stanze, 82: “Alza gli occhi, alza, Iulio, a quella fiamma / che come un sol col suo splendor t’adombra: / quivi è colei che l’alte mente infiamma, / e che de’ petti ogni viltà disgombra. / Con essa, a guisa di semplice damma, / prenderai questa ch’ore nel cor t’ingombra / tanta paura, e t’invilisce l’alma; / ché sol ti serba lei trionfal palma.”

56

In his dream, after being crowned victorious by Glory, Giuliano foresees Simonetta’s death.

Sadness turns to relief when Giuliano realizes that Simonetta’s new role will be to act as his heavenly guide through life. In this, Poliziano’s treatment of Simonetta reflects Florentine neoplatonic philosophy, in which spirits seek to rise upwards on the path towards the highest good, the summum bonum, by means of love. “In Plato,” Landino writes, “love is defined as the desire for beauty. Wherefore in this kind of love, honor calls us away from foul deeds; and the desire of excelling impels [us] to whatever [things are] virtuous.”165 As a result, when divine

“beauty presents itself to our eyes, our mind […] admires it, and loves it, and by it as if by a certain road is brought to heaven.”166 This progressive, productive love is aligned with the appearance of Venus in Bronzino’s painting—rather than yielding luxurious, indulgent indolence, the love borne by Francesco Guardi and Giuliano de’ Medici will serve as impetus for their noble triumph.

Concluding his retelling of the hero’s prophetic dream, Poliziano returns us to the moment of Giuliano’s awakening. Giuliano arises “burning with love and a desire for glory.”167

The poet takes care to remind us (twice more) that the scene (as in the Pygmalion and Galatea) takes place at dawn.168 At this point, just as he has foreseen in his dream, Giuliano is visited by

“armed Glory,” summoning him to the joust. Emboldened, he “seems to hear the sounding

165 Landino in Stahel, “Landino’s Allegorization of the Aeneid,” 72.

166 Ibid., 62.

167 II, 39. Quint, Stanze, 87 (original, 86): “tutto stupendo, / d’amore e d’un disio di gloria ardendo.”

168 II, 38 and 39.

57 trumpets.” Hearing the crowds calling his name, and Giuliano is set “all afire” and “becomes fierce in arms.”169

In the poem’s last stanzas, Giuliano prays for victory in his upcoming joust. In the woodcut, he is shown kneeling before the altar, beseeching Venus for aid:

And you who, inside a fiery cloud, deigned to show your face to me, who steal every thought from my heart except for a love which I cannot help; and you have inflamed me as, at the sound of trumpets, a spirited horse is inflamed to arms: (II, 43) [….] for your fire inflames all my heart; from you I hope to gain the lofty victory (II, 46).170

The woodcut illustration for these stanzas—Giuliano’s prayer to Venus—clearly has much in common with the format of the Pygmalion and Galatea. This is perhaps because the subject of both images is the power of love.

In Poliziano’s hands, an historical circumstance becomes a mechanism for contemplation of the nature and potential of divine love. Salvatore Settis characterizes the poem as “entirely concerned with the ambiguous essence of Eros, now unbridled ‘animal’ lust, later still rapturous, but divine.”171 David Quint explains that throughout the first portion of the text, human love is

169 II, 40. Quint, Stanze, 87 (original, 86): “Pargli vedersi tuttavia davanti / la Gloria armata in su l’ale veloce/ chiamare a Giostra e valorosi amanti, / e gridar “Iulio Iulio” ad alta voce. / Già sentir pargli le trombe sonanti, / già divine tuto nell’arme feroce: / cosí tutto focoso in piè risorge, / e verso il cel cota’ parole porge:”

170 Book II, 43 in Quint, Stanze, 89. Original Italian, 88: “E tu che drento alla ‘nfocata nube / degnasti tua sembianza dimostrarmi, / e ch’ogni altro pensier dal cor mi rube, / fuor che d’amor dal qual non posso atarmi; e m’infiammasti come a suon di tube / animoso caval s’infiamma all’armi, / fammi in tra gli altri, o Gloria, sí solenne, ch’io batta insino al cel teco le penne.” Stanze Book II, 46: in Quint, Stanze, 91. Original Italian, 90: “ché ‘l vostro foco tutto el cor m’avampa; / da voi spero acquistar l’alta vittoria”

171 Settis, “Citarea,” 150: “Il poema del Poliziano è, così, tutto giocato sull’ambigua essenza di Eros, ora sfrenata, ‘bestiale’ lussuria, ora invece furore sì, ma santo.”

58

“decidedly earthbound,” and tied to an earlier tradition of Italian literature, the dolce stil novo— the legacy of which is evident in Poliziano’s passages exploring the realm of Venus.172 The conclusion of the Stanze, however, to which the print belongs, differs from the rest of the poem in that it demonstrates divine love’s potential as a positive motivating force.

With an equal richness, Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea explores the same aspects of love, interwoven with current events and the ancient mythological past. Jodi Cranston has described the action of raising an allegorical portrait cover as “invoke[ing] an interpretive process congruent with that of reading poetry”—a useful way to approach Bronzino’s

Pygmalion.173 The myth describes misplaced lust and passion, but when refashioned as an allegorical comment upon a beautiful portrait, the story becomes an elaboration upon love’s dominion over art. This is only one, however, of several possible readings, a layer among layers—for as Cranston writes, the depicted allegory is “itself a mode associated with covering what it means to say.”174 When reconsidering the pair of paintings in the context of Florentine

Renaissance poetry, the two works are also able to demonstrate love’s ability to inspire the young hero to worthy action.

For the Florentine humanists, divine love is the means by which young men strengthen the body and ennoble the mind.175 The fact that Giuliano de’ Medici and Francesco Guardi are

172 Quint, Stanze, xvii.

173 Cranston, “Poetics of Portraiture,” 28.

174 Ibid.

175 Poliziano describes the goddess as “she who inflames lofty minds and removes all baseness from the heart,” associating her with his invocation of Venus in the Stanze’s opening lines. At the beginning of his poem, Poliziano addresses the goddess: “O fair god: you who inspire through the eyes / […] you ennoble / whatever you regard, for no baseness can exist / within your breast: Love, whose subject I am / forever, now lend your hand to my low intel- / lect (I, 2). Landino likewise describes love as “master of all the greatest arts. For neither does anyone 59 educated, well-bred young men is important, because they are the particular subjects of divine love’s reign. David Quint describes the transformation of Giuliano in the Stanze as a kind of coming-of-age, in which “love will lead Julio back into the city, to the tournament quite literally in the midst of the civic arena.”176 Divine love, writes Quint, appears “as an educative link between the individual and the culture of his society. Love is the catalyst which transforms human potential into humanitas.” According to Christina Storey, in the last stanzas of his poem,

Poliziano “places a particular emphasis on the ennobling function of love […] the moral has become its power to inspire the lover to noble activity (jousting and poetry, for example) in the pursuit of humanitas.”177 Humanitas, in this case, encompasses many desirable virtues, and is allegorized by Venus. Marsilio Ficino, for example, advises a young pupil to fix his eyes “on

Venus herself, that is to say on Humanitas [who is] born of heaven, [and] is Temperance and

Honesty, Charm and Splendour.”178 Ernst Gombrich, in his study of Poliziano’s Stanze, explains the neoplatonic emphasis on Humanitas as particularly fitting for the sons of elevated merchants—the bella gioventù—of republican Florence, because, to Ficino, “the supreme virtue which the young man should embrace is Humanitas, and the word calls up the Ciceronian ideal of refinement and culture, the virtue with which the Florentine merchants matched and outshone the courtly conventions of chivalry. [….] For a boy, the moral principle represented by Venus,

invent an art nor does he learn and invented art from another unless a delight in investigation and desire of learning impel him.”

176 Quint, Stanze, xvii.

177 Storey, “Ficino, Poliziano, and Le Stanze,” 613.

178 Ficino in Ernst Gombrich, “Botticelli’s Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of his Circle,” JWCT, 8 (1945): 7-60, 17-18.

60 whether we call it Culture or Courtesy, Beauty or Humanity, was the proper guide towards the higher spheres.”179

In the final illustration of Poliziano’s Stanze, Giuliano de’ Medici kneels in worship before a Venus who at once embodies Divine Love, Humanitas, Victory, and Glory, and who is dedicated above all to her Florentine followers. But although the print identifies her as Venus, and the poem names her as the young man’s proper guide, her helmet and spear have long confused commenters. In Settis’ study of the image, he reveals her to be “a Venus-Humanitas to whom, in the final years of the quattrocento, the platonic meditations of Marsilio Ficino or

Landino’s Disputationes Camaldulenses gave an especially Florentine citizenship.”180 She is a divine entity who is both bellicose and wise, worthy of devotion, and able to deliver triumph in the arts of poetry and war.181

In the sixteenth century, Venus sometimes adopts a distinctly military role. She appears in thus in Titian’s altarpiece depicting Jacopo Pesaro being presented by Pope Alexander VI to

Saint Peter [fig. 1.10].182 Pesaro was the Bishop of Paphos in Cyprus (an isle devoted to Venus), as well as the commander of the papal fleet; the altarpiece is connected to the bishop’s successful participation in the sea-battle of Santa Mauro. There are two different manifestations of love on

179 Gombrich, “Botticelli’s Mythologies,” 18.

180 Settis, “Citarea,” 150: “una cittadinanza precisamente Fiorentina.”

181 In this humanist context, Venus takes on the attributes of Minerva, her weapons and intellectual virtue. Indeed, Settis identifies her as “a Minerva-Venus, or a Venus Victrix” (Settis, loc. cit.). In Wittkower’s “Transformations of Minerva,” the author demonstrates that this revision of Venus’s identity was characteristic of Renaissance approaches to the past, which allowed artists to freely combine elements from different sources. Wittkower’s article examines the fifteenth-century origins of Venus Victrix, “who,” he notes, “was venerated together with ‘Victoria’ as a Goddess of Victory. As such she has qualities in common with Minerva” (“Transformations of Minerva,” 202).

182 The painting, c. 1503-12 (oil on canvas) is in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

61 the altar, in an arrangement that complements the juxtaposition of earthly and heavenly love in the Pygmalion and Galatea. On the side nearest Pesaro, who kneels before the altar, there is an image of Venus embodying, in Rudolf Wittkower’s words, “the ideas of victory, peace, and virtue.”183 Across from her, on the opposite side of the altar, is a “youth with grapes and an amorous couple, stand[ing] for voluptuous passion. [Thus] lustful passion [is distinguished from] divine love. As the representative of Christ blesses the victor who is presented to him by the

Pope, so Cupid shoots his arrow of Divine Love at Venus-Minerva, the symbol of victory and virtue.”184 The appearance of Venus signals that Pesaro’s victory in the battle of Santa Mauro was earned in reward for his divine love.185 Venus armata is, as Settis, writes, “by definition celestial.”186 The altarpiece therefore juxtaposes terrestrial love with the celestial in a manner analogous to the Pygmalion and Galatea, while similarly celebrating Venus’s proven ability to deliver actual military triumph.

In Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea, this same, benevolently multifaceted goddess visits Pygmalion’s studio.187 It is she who hears Julio’s dawn appeal in Poliziano’s poem, and to

183 Wittkower, “Transformations of Minerva,” 203.

184 Ibid.

185 Ibid.

186 Settis, “Citarea,” 171.

187 The visit may not be a singular occurrence: it may reappear in a little known and poorly understood Pygmalion tapestry in England. Possibly the work of the seventeenth century Flemish artist Michiel Wauters, the tapestry hangs in the Cotehele collection in Cornwall, and is described simply as a Pygmalion. It forms part of a larger series, and seems be one of several copies made after the same design, which depicts Pygmalion taking hammer and chisel to his Galatea in a large outdoor patio. A very similar tapestry is in Parham Park, Pulborough, West Sussex. Six sets of the series were imported to England from Antwerp. One tapestry from the series is in the art institute in Chicago. Wendy Hefford, in her 1983 study of what she calls the “Pygmalion series,” discovers “an alien element” in the tapestry. The interloper is “a figure with helmet and spear, watching the sculptor at work [and] clearly wearing a long skirt. There is a 62 whom Pygmalion prays under the morning star.188 If, has been suggested, the figure of

Pygmalion (derived from Pontormo’s Saint Francis) is intended as an allegorical reference to

Francesco Guardi, then perhaps in Bronzino’s painting and the woodcut illustration, Giuliano and Francesco invoke Venus in an analogous manner. 189 When Venus visits those men—young heroes of the same privileged class urged by Cavalcanti to take up arms for the first time—the implication is that she will lead them to a noble victory.

Like Giuliano before the joust, Aeneas and Dante on their quests, and the Lacedaemonian women before them, it is through divine love that the republican youth will prevail. Trexler describes Cavalcanti’s oration as offering “the golden promise of the Magian empire of Florence, this time from the mouths of its civil, warrior youth. The future utopia seemed to abide in the honor of the young.”190 Cavalcanti commands them to “ignite in your hearts the ardent flame of that sincere and benevolent love [that] guides us on the true path.”191

shield on the ground behind this figure [which] bears the Gorgon’s head, identifying the mysterious figure as Minerva. She had no place in the Pygmalion story. […] Could the votive torch of Pygmalion praying to Venus in the background of the tapestry have been confused in the artist’s mind?” Perhaps not. As Wittkower (“Transformations of Minerva,” 202) has argued, the celestial Venus sometimes carries Minerva’s shield. Wendy Hefford, “The Chicago Pygmalion and the ‘English Metamorphoses,’” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, vol. 10 (1983): 93- 117, esp. 104.

188 Bronzino’s Venus-Galatea is nude, and decidedly unarmed. This does not imply a dearth of power: in the following chapter, this quality is shown to be part of her strength. The figure of Pygmalion’s beloved statue is derived from Michelangelo’s David, the iconic personification of the last republic. The David’s lack of weapons—he is armored by his faith—is part of his republican symbolism, in which the Venus-Galatea takes part.

189 For the identification of Francesco Guardi in the figure of Pygmalion, see Brock, Bronzino, 57, and Cox-Rearick, “Bronzino as Draftsman,” 22, and page 33 above.

190 Trexler, Public Life, 535.

191 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 24-5: “Accendasi [in vostri petti] l’ardente fiamma di sincere e salutifero amore [….] che per dritto cammino ci guida.”

63

The next chapter will turn from the character of Pygmalion’s love to its cherished object, interpreting the statue of Galatea-Venus as Fiorenza, a personification of Florence. Cavalcanti means to inflame the hearts of his listeners with love for their native city. More specifically, victory against the besieging armies depends on the devotion borne by the young Florentines for the republic. “O love of liberty,” he cries, “how you are efficacious! O love of country, how you are potent! You inflame our once tepid hearts. You arm and fortify our once naked and weak souls, making us invincible to the most fearsome things.”192 In the Pygmalion and Galatea,

Guardi’s love is his greatest weapon.

192 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 18: “O amor della libertà, quanto sei efficace! O carita della partia, quanto sei potente! [….] Ti infiammi i gia tiepidi nostril cuori: tu armi e fortifichi I gia nudi e debili animi nostril: tu dale piu spaventevoli cose gli rendi invitti.”

64

CHAPTER TWO: Flesh and Stone

Thus is our republic reborn in a beautiful body, but doubtless weak and unsteady, deprived of that force, which, once given her, will render her strong and vigorous, and perhaps eternal. –Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, Santo Spirito, Florence, February 3rd, 1530.193

In the Pygmalion myth, a beloved statue comes to life. In Bronzino’s version of the tale, the transformation is political. Designed to accompany Pontormo’s portrait of Francesco Guardi, the Pygmalion and Galatea serves as its allegorical counterpart, demonstrating the young guardsman’s devotion to the beleaguered last republic. The previous chapter examined the interaction between Pygmalion and his statue, which takes the form of Venus. The evident love felt by Pygmalion for his Galatea was explained as a divine motivating force—Francesco’s inspiration to noble action in the republic’s defense. In this continuation of that study, focus shifts from the nature of the hero’s love to its cherished object, examining Pygmalion’s quickening statue as a politicized personification of Florence.

Vasari describes Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea as capturing the moment of the sculptor’s prayer, offered in the hope that Venus will inspirit his Galatea, bringing her to life “so that his statue, receiving the spirit, will awake and, as is told by the poets, become flesh and bone.”194 In Bronzino’s richly toned painting, under the aegis of Venus, Michelangelo’s marble

David comes to life: Galatea’s figure is a direct transposition of the statue, flipped on its vertical

193 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 13: “Così adunque rinacque la nostra Republica con honesto corpo, ma certamente fragile e caduco, però che di quel vigore era priva, il quale, di poi donatole, ferma e gagliarda la rendé, e quasi eterna ce la promesse.”

194 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 274: “perché la sua statua, ricevendo lo spirito, s’avviva e divenga (come fece, secondo le favole di poeti) di carne e d’ossa.”

65 axis [fig. 2.1]. The form of the David—in its gender-shifted mirror image—is almost entirely preserved, without compromising the figure’s perspicuous Venusian identity, set forth in the previous chapter. Even the David’s stony plinth is faithfully reproduced, confirmation that the reference is not purely aesthetic, but meant to recall the sculpture—the physical object itself— with all its cultural significance.195

Despite their seeming incongruity, these apparently disparate references to two inharmonious figures— male and female, biblical and mythological, warrior and goddess—are closely related in their roles as civic symbols. In Renaissance Florence, the goddess Venus was elided with a feminine personification of Florence, Fiorenza, and the David came to be viewed as a polemical embodiment of the small republic, struggling against its tyrannical enemies. In the Pygmalion and Galatea, Bronzino unites their forms to create a coherent composite image, a visual and ideological parataxis evoking not just Florence, but the last Florentine republic.

Wedded in Pygmalion’s statue, Venus and the David together embody an especially apposite

Fiorenza, an incarnation of republican Florence rooted in Tuscan tradition, yet inseparable from the moment of the Siege.

I.

Despite the shift in identity and gender, Bronzino’s translation of Michelangelo’s David into the form of his Venusian Galatea is remarkably complete. Shepherd-warrior and goddess of love stand on rough, rocky pedestals, weight heavily resting on one leg. Galatea’s contrapposto is slightly more exaggerated, with her relaxed leg bent at a sharper angle, and the corresponding

195 On the importance of pedestals in constructing public meaning, see Kathleen Weil-Garris, “On Pedestals: Michelangelo’s David, Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, and the Sculpture of the Piazza della Signoria,” Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 20 (1983): 378-415, and Alison Wright, “‘…con uno inbasamento et ornament alto’: The Rhetoric of the Pedestal c. 1430-1550,” Art History 34, no. 1 (Feb., 2011): 8-53.

66 hip and opposite shoulder dropped a bit lower, giving her figure a feminine sway. With the

David imagined in his mirror-image, the two statues can stand in perfect parallel, side by side, bodies facing towards the right. Above well-muscled torsos, heads swivel outward to address the viewer. Galatea has no need for David’s sling, but she mimes the position in which he holds the weapon: right arm drawn close to the shoulder, palm towards the flesh, and left hand dropped to the waist, wrist bent sharply inward. David is nude, but with her left hand (crooked fingers retaining the shape of the sling) Galatea clutches a dawn-colored drapery, the pink-and-yellow fabric loosely gathered at her waist. The outline of Galatea’s head recalls that of the David, while understated strawberry locks fall along either side of her neck, alerting us to her femininity.

Stuart Currie, writing in 2000, identified a partial debt to Michelangelo’s statue in

Galatea’s figure, without recognizing the extent of the compositional allusion. Currie noted a quotation of the David in the positioning of Galatea’s hands, seeing in the gesture a comment upon the property of touch inherent in sculpture, related to the paragone debate.196 For Currie, the reference is an “artistic sleight of hand,” cleverly designed to display Bronzino’s deftness at

“deceptively skillful insertions, without easy detection.”197 The David, Currie notes, was

“possibly the most venerated sculptural masterwork of the early Cinquecento,” and Bronzino’s incorporation of its form into the Galatea “a purposeful illustration of the manner in which the highly skilled painter may, with great imagination, great discretion, and perhaps even great wit, deploy the deceptive qualities of his art to astonishingly delicate bravura effect.”198

196 Currie, “Secularised Sculptural Imagery.”

197 Ibid., 246

198 Ibid.

67

The paragone offers an important framework for the interpretation of Bronzino’s highly sculptural paintings, but does not, to my mind, provide a satisfying rationale for Bronzino’s particular selection of the David as the model for his Galatea.199 When Bronzino painted the

Pygmalion and Galatea, Michelangelo’s David was not simply a venerated masterwork, but a controversial emblem of the anti-Medicean Florentine republic.

Maurice Brock first drew attention to the completeness of Galatea’s dependence upon the

David in his 2002 monograph.200 Although Brock noted the political significance of the statue, his investigation is colored by his dating of the painting to after Bronzino’s return to Florence in the early 1530s, an hypothesis refuted by other scholars.201 Observing that the reference to

Michelangelo’s David is “obviously full of meaning,” Brock elaborates by noting that the young

199 Many other authors, without noting the Michelangelism of the Galatea, have argued that the paragone is the painting’s overarching theme. See, for example, Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio (Berkeley: UC Berkeley Press, 1993), 117; Alain Laframboise, “Entre Galatée et Andromède, Méduse,” in Andromède ou le héros a l’épreuve de la beauté, edited by Françoise Siguret ed d’Alain Laframboise (Paris: Klincksieck, 1996): 27-55, 32. On the paragone theory and sixteenth-century art, see Leatrice Mendelsohn, Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi’s Due Lezzioni and Cinquecento Art Theory (Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1982).

200 Brock, Bronzino, 57. Despite the dozen years that have passed since Brock’s publication, few if any studies have recognized the entirety of Bronzino’s use of Michelangelo’s David, or treated the reference as ideologically substantial. Cheney and Bonetti have more recently described the figure of Galatea as simply “compositionally derivative” of Michelangelo’s David, using the connection as evidence of Bronzino’s interest in the paragone debate (“Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea: l’antica bella maniera”). For Michelangelo’s influence on Bronzino, see Elizabeth Pilliod, “The Influence of Michelangelo: Pontormo, Bronzino and Allori,” in Reactions to the Master: Michelangelo’s effect on art and artists in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis and Paul Joannides (London: Ashgate, 2003): 31-52.

201 Brock, Bronzino, 54. Cropper, “Pygmalion and Galatea” (2010), 78: “Vasari places the creation of the cover after the completion of the portrait, but nonetheless implies that Bronzino’s cover was painted before the ending of the siege. There is really no reason to doubt this, or to suggest that the cover had to be painted after the change in regime to conceal the young Francesco Guardi’s position.”

68 biblical hero “constitutes one of the traditional figures of the city’s Republican virtue.”202 He adds that, “in spite of the institution of the principate, in the 1530s no one in Florence would have forgotten that Michelangelo’s David symbolized the Republic.”203 Though asserting that the David would have been legible as a republican reference (even in the 1530s), Brock proposes that the Pygmalion and Galatea operates in opposition to Pontormo’s portrait, serving to disguise

(physically to hide) the partisan significance of the Halberdier, thought to have become taboo after the change in power.204 But if, as proposed in the previous chapter, the portrait and its cover are understood as complementary—as a pair of republican pictures originating during the period of the Siege—then Bronzino’s incorporation of the David in his Pygmalion and Galatea appears perfectly consonant with the republican themes that pervade Pontormo’s Halberdier.

The Halberdier and its cover each include compositional references to Florentine representations of the young hero David. Even with longstanding disagreement over the identification of the Halberdier, there is consensus that the young man’s presentation is designed to recall famous statues of David (particularly those by Donatello), and the allusion understood to associate the sitter with traditional republican ideals.205 In support of her identification of the portrait as the republican Francesco Guardi, Elizabeth Cropper has concluded that “by means of its conspicuous association with Donatello, the portrait identified the specific person and character of Francesco Guardi, his promise and his conflicting hope and fears, with the character

202 Brock, Bronzino, 57.

203 Ibid.

204 Ibid., 54.

205 For two opposing discussions of the Halberdier that cite the allusion to Donatello’s David as such, see, for example, Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier, 84-88, and Antonio Pinelli, La bellezza impura: arte e politica nell’ Italia del Rinascimento (Rome: Laterza, 2004), 140.

69 and emotions of Florence as the city struggled to define its own identity and mount its own defense.”206

At the time of the Siege, David bore a strong partisan connotation—a political significance inseparable from the history of the famous statues to which the Halberdier and

Pygmalion and Galatea refer. In the fifteenth century, Florentine iconography established the shepherd David as a tyrannicide whose strength was dependent on God’s heavenly aide, bestowed upon the boy for the righteousness of his cause.207 Donatello’s marble David with the head of Goliath appears to be the first instance of the subject in the Florentine canon, establishing the typology of the politicized young hero [fig. 2.2].208 It was installed in the

Palazzo della Signoria in 1416 at the special request of the city’s republican government.209

Accompanying the statue was an inscription: “pro patria fortiter dimicantibus etiam adversus terribilissimos hostes deus prestat victoria” (To those who fight strongly for the fatherland, God lends aid even against the most terrible foes).210

206 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 87.

207 The most complete study is Caglioti, Donatello e i Medici.

208 Donato, “Hercules and David,” 94. Later fifteenth-century examples (besides Donatello’s own bronze version) include a painted David Victorious by Pollaiuolo in Berlin, Verrocchio’s bronze David installed at the Palazzo Vecchio in the 1470s, and a David painted on leather by Andrea del Castagno.

209 Donato, “Hercules and David,” 90. The statue was displayed in the sala dei gigli, against a newly added background of heraldic lilies (a symbol of Florence). See Alison Brown, “De- masking Renaissance Republicanism,” in Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited by James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000): 179-99.

210 The inscription was revised and confirmed by Donato’s documentary research in 1992 (“Hercules and David,” 90-91.) The translation is by Allie Terry, in “Donatello’s Decapitations,” 630.

70

Maria Monica Donato, whose research has confirmed the originality of the inscription, presents the statement as corroboration of the arguments put forward many years earlier by

Frederick Hartt, in his influential essay on “Art and Freedom in Quattrocento Florence.”211 For

Hartt, the marble David was an embodiment of Florentine libertas—symbolic of the small republic’s recent victories against foreign autocratic Goliaths.212 Hartt’s emphasis on external threats, maintained by Donato, reflects the strong influence of the writings of Hans Baron, who proposed that Florentine republicanism and its culture of “civic humanism” were born in response to a foreign tyrannical menace.213 For Hartt and his followers, Donatello’s marble

David is therefore to be understood as a monument to Florence’s continued freedom from external domination.

The call for action against tyranny is even more explicit in the message inscribed on the pedestal of Donatello’s later bronze David. Uncovered by Christine Sperling, the inscription read: “Victor est quisquis patriam tuetur Frangit immanis Deus hostis iras En puer grandem domuit tirmnum Vincite cives” (The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! a boy overcame a great tyrant. Conquer, o citizens!).214

211 Hartt, “Art and Freedom in Quattrocento Florence,” in Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann (New York, 1964), 114-31; reprinted in Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th Century Writings on the Visual Arts, ed. W.E. Kleinbauer (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971): 293-311.

212 The foreign threats were posed first by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and then by King Ladislas (Hartt, “Art and Freedom,” 301.) See also Andrew Butterfield, “New Evidence”; Robert Williams, “‘Virtus Perficitur’.”

213 Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1955), and In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988).

214 For the inscription, see Sperling, “Donatello’s bronze ‘David.’” Sperling’s article is fundamental, even though she was unaware of the work of Cecil Grayson, which contradicts her 71

Like the marble version, the role of the bronze David as republican civic monument is complicated by its connection to the Medici family. Indeed, Davidian iconography in the fifteenth century occurs in the service of two seemingly opposed patrons, one autocratic and the other (ostensibly) democratic. Andrew Butterfield has attempted to resolve this conflict by proposing that the young David should be understood more generally as a symbol of good government, a trait attractive to both the Medici and the republican government (the Signoria).215

More convincing is the argument, offered by several scholars, that the Medicean adoption of anti-tyrannical rhetoric is perfectly coherent with the family’s fifteenth-century pseudo- republican agenda.216

While the injunction to just sovereignty may be an important factor in Davidian imagery,

Sarah Blake McHam’s identification of classical precedents for Donatello’s bronze David (and its pendant Judith and Holofernes) seems to justify the claim that the statues would have been understood as explicitly anti-tyrannical public monuments [fig. 2.3].217 McHam argues that in addition to the directives found in the inscriptions, the fifteenth-century audience would have recognized the statues as modern versions of a famous ancient public statue group, the Athenian

proposal for the author of the inscription. (Cecil Grayson, “Poesie latine di Gentile Becchi in un codice bodleiano,” in Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi, B. Maracchi Biagiarelli and D. E. Rhodes, eds. [Florence: Olschki, 1973]: 285-303). For the bibliography and a revision of Sperling, see Crum, “Donatello’s bronze David.”

215 Butterfield, “New Evidence.”

216 McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David,” 43.

217 The Judith had two inscriptions: the first “Regna cadunt luxu, surgunt virtutibus urbes: / Cesa vides humili colla superba manu.” The second (“Salus Publica. / Petrus Medices Cos. Fi. libertati simul / et fortitudini hanc mulieris statuam, / quo cives invicto constantique animo ad/ rem publicam redderentur, dedicavit”) is a dedication by Piero de’ Medici (Francesco Caglioti, Donatello e i Medici, 11).

72

Tyrannicides.218 The Medici family’s choice to employ such themes in their own commissions can be explained as a tactical move, one through which they sought to identify themselves as

“venerable Old Testament tyrant slayers and saviors of their people, symbolically inverting the growing chorus of accusations that the Medici had become tyrants who had sucked all real power out of the city’s republican institutions.”219

Roger Crum has updated Donato’s investigation of Florentine anti-tyrannical ideology by demonstrating that the perceived threat from internal sources was as urgent as those from abroad.

The image of David in the fifteenth century was meant to act as an equally potent warning to any

Florentines who might seek to seize power from their fellow citizens. As such, it was all the more in the Medicean interest to demonstrate their own rejection of tyranny, however duplicitous such affirmations might seem. Alison Brown explains that the Medici systematically appropriated republican imagery; Cosimo il Vecchio and his family

cast themselves firmly in the role of defenders of liberty, using visual images and verbal rhetoric with equal dexterity. They commissioned their own bronze version of the marble David that Donatello had carved for the government. [….] They modeled their new palace in Via Larga on the Palazzo della Signoria, subtly hinting at public authority […and] confusing the boundary between the communal ‘liberty’ represented by the public palace and the appropriated liberty represented in their own private space.220

The family was called to account for this ideological sleight-of-hand in 1494, when past and present members were declared tyrants.221 Cosimo il Vecchio’s descendants were expelled

218 McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David,” 32.

219 Ibid, 43.

220 Brown, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence, 326. The Medici also commissioned Verrocchio’s 1473 bronze David, which was sold to the government and moved to the Palazzo della Signoria in 1476 (Herzner, “David Florentinus,” 126-128).

221 Crum, ““Donatello’s Bronze David,” 44: “In the period after Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici’s expulsion in 1494, the Florentines definitely regarded as tyrannical not simply Piero but the whole Medici family and its regime, past and present.”

73 from the city and the title of Pater Patriae struck from his tomb, under the pretense that he did not deserve the title, but rather that of tyrant: “talis tale titulum non meruit, sed potius tirannus.”222 According to the new republican leadership, “tyranny is now defunct and everyone desires liberty and equality.”223 The bronze David of Donatello was taken from the Palazzo

Medici and displayed within the Palazzo della Signoria, a defiant act that only increased the potency of its symbolic content, endowing it with a decidedly anti-Medicean bent.224

II.

With these earlier examples in mind, Michelangelo came to sculpt his own marble David.

After the fall of Savonarola, a new republican constitution was adopted on August 4th, 1501; twelve days later Michelangelo was commissioned by the Signoria to undertake the David.225

The block of marble provided to Michelangelo had already been partly carved by another sculptor, and Vasari describes Michelangelo’s “resuscitation” of the marble as truly miraculous,

222 ASF Repubblica, Del. Della Signoria 156, c. 108b (22 November, 1495), reprinted in Karl Frey, “Studien zu Michelagniolo Buonarroti und zur Kunst seiner Zeit. III,” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 30 (1909): 103-180, 114, “Item deliberaverunt, quod inscription sepulchri Coîme de Medicis in ecclesia Santj Laurentij in pavimento proper altare maius, cuius talis est titulus ‘Coîme Medici patri patrie’, omnino deleatur, quia talis tale titulum non meruit, sed potius tirannus.”

223 Rubinstein, “Florentine constitutionalism and Medici ascendancy in the fifteenth century” in Florentine Studies. Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. N. Rubinstein (London: Faber, 1968): 442-63.

224 The David and the Judith and Holofernes were transferred from the Medici palace to the Palazzo Vecchio, locating the former in the building’s courtyard and the latter in the external ringhiera (Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 445). To add emphasis, an anti-tyrannical inscription was added to the pedestal of the Judith group. “Inside and out,” writes Hale, “the headquarters of government proclaimed Florence’s rejection of sixty Medicean years.” (Florence and the Medici, 89).

225 Michael Hirst, “Michelangelo in Florence,” 487. The contract date (16 August 1501) is published in Milanesi, Le lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti pubblicate coi ricordi ed i contratti artistici, edited by G. Milanesi (Forence: Le Monnier, 1875), 620-623.

74 the restoration to life of what was already dead.226 Vasari connects the statue’s origin to

Michelangelo’s friendship with the new republic’s gonfaloniere, Piero Soderini, who, as leader of the republic, took an image of the young David as his personal seal.227

In June of 1504, the David was put into position in front of the entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, seat of the republican government (and Soderini’s residence) [fig. 2.4]. Stephen

Milner has argued that during the republican period, the critical element in the construction of meaning for statues in the Piazza della Signoria was their location.228 In its placement at the entrance to the Signoria, the David was given what has been described as the “most conspicuous civic location.”229 Although questions remain as to the precise motives behind the commission and placement of Michelangelo’s David, it is clear that once set before the seat of the republican government, the statue’s role as emblem of that entity was unequivocal.230 From the first,

226 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 154: “...e certo fu miracolo quello di Michelangelo far risucitare uno che era morto.”

227 On Vasari’s opinion, see Lorenzo Polizzotto, “Iustus ut palma florebit,” 265. On Soderini’s role in the commission of Michelangelo’s marble (and missing bronze) Davids, see Hirst, “Michelangelo in Florence,” 490; Keizer, “Giuliano Salviati, Michelangelo and the ‘David’”; Polizzotto, “Iustus ut palma florebit,” 274.

228 Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria as Practiced Place,” in Roger Crum and John Paoletti, eds., Renaissance Florence: A Social History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006): 83-103, 100.

229 Irving Lavin, “David’s Sling, and Michelangelo’s Bow: A Sign of Freedom” in Past-Present: Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso (Berkeley: University of California Press,1993): 29-61 + 268-74, 55.

230 William Wallace, Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Wallace writes, “For Florentines, David was an exemplar of strength and courage in the face of adversity and a hero with whom they closely identified. […] Michelangelo’s colossus became a centerpiece of civic pride and was given the best position on Florence’s main piazza, where it symbolically guarded the city” (61). See also Paul Joannides, “Two Drawings Related to Michelangelo’s ‘Hercules and Antaeus’,” Master Drawings 41, no. 2 (Summer, 2003): 105-118; Virginia L. Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules and Cacus’ and the Florentine Tradition,” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 35 (1980), 163-206. Charles 75

Michelangelo’s David was a divisive symbol: on the night of its transfer, rocks were thrown at the statue, probably by supporters of the Medici.231

After the David was put into place, Niccolò Machiavelli paused his ruminations on the importance of a citizen militia to protect the republic, to cite an example from the Old Testament he found especially relevant: Machiavelli invoked the young David as a model for successful native (not mercenary) troops. Paul Barolsky has argued that this comment should be understood, at least in part, as a personal response to Michelangelo’s statue, guarding the seat of the republic.232 The David was seen, to use Machiavelli’s phrase, as type of “cittadino guerriero,” an apotropaic hero and deterrent to tyranny.233 Writing several decades later, Vasari describes the statue as an exemplar: “in the same way that [David] had defended his people and

Seymour, Michelangelo’s David, 68-72.

231 On the vandalism of the David, see Hirst, “Michelangelo in Florence,” 490 and 30n. The stoning is recalled in ASF, Otto di Guardia, Repubblica 129, fols. 38r-39r. On its political significance, see Lavin, “David’s Sling,” 55.

232 “Voglio ancora ridurre a memoria una figura del testamento vecchio fatta a questo proposito. Offerendosi David a Saul di andare a combattere con Golia, provocatore filisteo, Saul, per darli animo, l’armò dell’arme sua: le quali, come David ebbe indosso, recuò, dicendo con quelle non si potere bene valere di sé stesso, e però voleva trovare el nimico con la sua fromba…” Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe, edited by Giuseppe Lisio (Florence: Sansoni, 1900), 85-6. Paul Barolsky writes that “Machiavelli invokes David as the allegorical figura of the militia, the personification of the city’s native troops…allud[ing] to a deep Florentine tradition that portrayed David as protector of the patria, a tradition most highly developed in the arts.... We can easily imagine Machiavelli standing in the piazza, looking up at Michelangelo’s David, and seeing this hero as the embodiment of the militia….exploit[ing] the powerful, gigantic image….” Barolsky, “Machiavelli, Michelangelo and ‘David’,” 32.

233 Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo [vol. 5]: The Final Period (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971), 9. Saul Levine, “The Location of Michelangelo’s David,” 34n. Levine provides an uncompromisingly republican and anti-Medicean analysis of the David.

76 governed them with justice so those who governed [Florence] should defend it courageously and govern it justly.”234

This parallel is reflected in an anonymous Florentine portrait from c. 1510, wherein

Michelangelo’s David can be seen maintaining its vigil as an armored man half-draws his sword in a demonstration of a similar willingness to defend the republic [fig. 2.5].235 Luciano Berti has characterized this guardsman as a member of the civil militia called for by Machiavelli, making him a predecessor of the subject of Pontormo’s Halberdier (Francesco Guardi).236 In the previous chapter, I examined the Halberdier in the context of legislation put forward by the last republic in 1528, which restored the citizen militia first established during the previous iteration of the republic, which had been subsequently disbanded by the Medici upon their return in

1512.237 In the portrait of c.1510, the artist includes Michelangelo’s David as a means to signal the sitter’s devotion to the republic. Bronzino’s incorporation of the same statue into his

Pygmalion and Galatea—allegorical cover to Pontormo’s portrait of a member of the revived republican civilian militia—seems indicative of analogous political allegiance.

234 “Ai come egli haveva difenso il suo popolo e governatolo con giustizia, così chi governava quella città dovesse animosamente difenderla e giustamente governarla.” Polizzotto, “Iustus ut palma florebit,” 265.

235 The painting (Portrait of a Condottiero, National Gallery, London) is attributed by Luciano Berti to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. See Luciano Berti, Pontormo e il suo tempo, 82; and Berti, “Michelangelo and the of the Sixteenth Century,” in Around the David: The Great Art of Michelangelo’s Century, Franca Falletti and Magnolia Scudieri, eds. (Florence: Giunti, 2003):28-73, 47. At the National Gallery, the work is now attributed to Francesco Granacci.

236 Luciano Berti, “Michelangelo and the Florentine Painting,” 47.

237 See Chapter 1, pages 44-5. Cecchi, for examples, similarly describes the Halberdier as “symbolic of the ideals of the youth prepared for sacrifice among the ranks of the citizen militia.” Cecchi, “Le due capitali. Tra Firenze e Roma dalla caduta della repubblica Fiorentina alla morte del Vasari,” in Roberto Paolo Ciardi and Antonio Natali, eds., Storia delle Arti in Toscana: Il Cinquecento (Florence: Edifir, 2000): 117-36, 117.

77

In the years between the statue’s collocation in the Piazza in 1504, and Bronzino’s painting of the Pygmalion and Galatea in c.1529-30, Michelangelo’s David seems to have become an increasingly divisive symbol. Each time power changed hands—in 1512, again in

1527, and, for the last time, in 1530—the statue became embroiled in the ruling government’s attempt to self-identify using public images.238 During the Soderini republic, Michelangelo had been charged with providing a pendant figure to accompany the David in his vigil outside the seat of the Signoria.239 When the Medici returned to Florence in 1512, this commission for a second statue was revoked. Under Medici control, the need for a pendant to the David had not diminished, but it seems that rather than seeking to complement its message, the city’s new leadership wished to neutralize the David’s republican effect. To do so, they turned to

Michelangelo’s competitor, the filomediceo sculptor Baccio Bandinelli.

For the triumphant entry of the Medici Pope Leo X into Florence in 1515, Bandinelli was hired to provide a stucco Hercules to stand in the Loggia de’ Lanzi, near the David.240

Bandinelli boasted that his would outshine Michelangelo’s statue.241 (Both statues are visible in

238 This is not to say that the association of the Florentine David statues with the republican government was somehow imposed on the Florentine audience. By the time the Medici returned to power in 1512, the connection was clearly elaborated in the public consciousness: Donatello’s bronze David (standing atop a column in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio) was struck by lightning in 1511, interpreted by contemporaries as an omen of the imminent end of republican control. See Michael W. Cole, “Perpetual Exorcism in Sistine Rome,” in The Idol in the Age of Art: Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, edited by Michael Wayne Cole and Rebecca Zorach (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009): 57-76, 62.

239 Joannides, “Two Drawings,” 106. On the republican significance of the Soderini commission, see Donato, “Hercules and David,” 97-8.

240 John Shearman, “The Florentine Entrata of Leo X, 1515,” JWCI 38 (1975): 136-154. See also Leopold D. Ettlinger, “Hercules Florentinus,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 16, no. 2 (1972): 119-142.

241 Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’”.

78

Vasari’s retrospective depiction of the event, the Procession of Pope Leo X through the Piazza della Signoria in 1515, a fresco dating to 1558-62 [fig. 2.6]).242 The following year, in 1516,

Bandinelli approached the Pope with a small model for a new figural group representing David and Goliath. Bandinelli proposed the statue for the courtyard of the Medici palace in Florence, where Donatello’s bronze David had once stood. Vasari records Bandinelli’s intentions and the statue’s reception:

Baccio in questo tempo portò a Roma al papa un modello bellisimo d’un Davitte ignudo, che tenendosi sotto Golia gigante gli tagliava la testa; con animo di farlo di bronzo o di marmo per lo cortile di casa Medici in Firenze, in quell luogo appunto dove era prima il Davitte di donato, che poi fu portato, nello spogliare il palazzo de’ Medici, nel palazzo allora de’ Signori. Il papa lodato Baccio, non parendogli tempo di fare allora il Davitte.243

Leo X’s rejection of this modello bellissimo on the grounds that it was the “wrong time for a

David” has been interpreted as a reaction to the inescapably republican and anti-Medicean connotations of the young hero.244 Bandinelli was given the commission instead for a bronze

Orpheus, meant to symbolize the peaceful nature of the pope’s reign over Florence.245

242 Florence, Sala di Leone X, Palazzo Vecchio. See Alessandro Cecchi, Antonio Natali, eds., L’officina della maniera. Varietà e fierezza nell’arte Fiorentina del Cinquecento fra le due repubblice, 1494-1530, exh. cat. (Venice: Marsilio, 1996): 192-3.

243 “At this time, Baccio brought to the Pope in Rome a beautiful model of a nude David, who, having Goliath below him, was cutting off [Goliath’s] head; [Baccio brought the model] desiring to create it in bronze or marble for the court of the Palazzo Medici in Florence, in the exact location where before Donato’s [Donatello’s] David stood, which had been carried, during the sacking of the Medici palace, to the Palazzo de’ Signori. The Pope praised Baccio, but it did not seem to him the right time for a David.” Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 142.

244 Robert B. Simon, “Bronzino’s Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici in Armor” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1982), 33. Karla Langedijk, “Baccio Bandinelli’s Orpheus,“ 33.

245 Langedijk, op. cit; Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’,” 178-182.

79

In 1524-25 Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici) sought proposals for a new statue group in the Piazza, returning to the commission Michelangelo had lost with the defeat of the republic in

1512. Although he wished to take up the project, Michelangelo was again denied, with the

Medici patrons once more choosing Bandinelli in his stead. Work was begun, but halted when the Medici were overthrown in 1527. That year, during the fight to expel the Medici, the arm of the David was broken, the target of iconoclasm apparently perpetrated by Medici partisans.246

With the successful restoration of the republic, the commission for the David’s partner statue was immediately taken from Bandinelli and returned to Michelangelo. When the republic fell for the final time in 1530, the block was once more taken from Michelangelo and given to

Bandinelli, who completed the work.247 This overtly political treatment of the commission for the David’s pendant is not only revelatory of contemporary sentiment regarding Michelangelo’s statue, but seems likely moreover to have itself further compounded the David’s public association with the anti-Medicean republic.

The treatment of Michelangelo’s statue in the 1530s should be viewed in the context of the republican opposition’s emphasis on David’s role as a tyrannicide and champion of underdogs. Following the republic’s defeat, the David remained a highly controversial statue, possessed of a polemical connotation so inflammatory that, unlike the sculptor’s other Florentine works, it was almost never copied or quoted by other artists.248 In one rare exception, the statue suffers the indignity of what Irving Lavin has termed “antirepublican symbolic vandalism.”249 In

246 The statue was subsequently repaired by Cecchino Salviati. Nardi, Istorie, II, 120.

247 Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’,” 178-182.

248 See Chapter 4, page 171.

249 Lavin, “David’s Sling,” 57.

80 a composition for the Duke Cosimo I, Vasari painted the David into a fresco in the Sala di Leone

X—the statue beheaded, and a dog relieving itself in the foreground [fig. 2.7]. Such disrespectful treatment is extremely unusual for any work by the period’s most celebrated Florentine artist, and seems clearly to betray a political motive.250

Given the discord surrounding the Florentine Piazza sculptures, and the dearth of known copies after Michelangelo’s David, Currie’s proposal that Bronzino included the David in his

Pygmalion and Galatea on the grounds of its venerated status seems inadequate. If we return to the subject matter of the Pygmalion and Galatea, however, a new hypothesis emerges. In the myth, Venus rewards the sculptor’s devotion by giving life to his beloved statue. In Bronzino’s

Pygmalion and Galatea, carried out during the last republic, the animated work is

Michelangelo’s David, a political icon closely associated with the previous iteration of the republic, revered by its supporters, and attacked by its Medicean opponents.251 By endowing his

Galatea with the form of Michelangelo’s David, Bronzino makes her transformation a vivid enactment of the recent reincarnation of the Florentine republic.

This reading is supported by contemporary political language that draws specific analogies between the hero David and the anti-Medicean last , portraying the last republic as David. One example comes from the republican leader Jacopo Nardi, in a speech given to the Emperor Charles V five years after the republic’s defeat. After the Medici victory of

250 Lavin, “David’s Sling,” 57. This was not the first time the statue had been treated thusly in Medicean commissions. Lavin reproduces a tapestry design by , commissioned by the Medici Pope Leo X (Oration of Giovan Battista Ridolfi in Florence), in which Soderini’s Medici-appointed replacement appears together with Michelangelo’s deliberately decapitated David.

251 See note 231 above for the stoning of the statue. During the fight to expel the Medici in 1527, the arm of the David was broken, and subsequently repaired by Cecchino Salviati. (Nardi, Istorie, II, 120).

81

1530, the republicans maintained an active government in exile. In 1535, the exiles sent representatives to to plead their case with the Emperor, challenging Duke Alessandro’s fitness as a ruler.252 Nardi, in attendance as one of the republican representatives, gave an oration in the form of an exposition on David’s fifth psalm, “Verba mea auribus percipe”

(“Ponder my words, O Lord”).253 The psalm is David’s request for aid against his enemies, presented by Nardi as the republicans’ plea for Charles’ action against the Duke. In explanation of the verse, “and the Lord will abhor the bloodthirsty and deceitful man,” Nardi draws repeated parallels between David and the Florentine republicans, and likewise between David’s enemies and the Medici Duke:

The prophet says: the Lord will hold in abomination he who is cruel, and he who sheds human blood, and he (that is David) has faith in the greatness of the Lord’s mercy. Equally great is the confidence that we have in Your Majesty’s goodness—O most just King [.…] As David’s enemy was bloodthirsty and cruel like a wolf, so is my adversary, says our city, our enemy who feeds on blood and is so harsh and bitter towards his homeland. And David who was meek and innocent, and who appears in the figure of Christ, having Saul in his power, did not hurt him. Similarly, the Florentine people, imitating in this the meekness of David and the kindness of Christ, did not ever shed the blood of their enemies in any change of state in rejection of tyranny, it being sufficient to recover past freedom. So the Florentines forgave past wrongs and embraced the relatives and friends of their enemies, and offered them a place to participate in the universal government with the other citizens—this they did in 1494 and 1527, and will now, at present, willingly pardon every injury…254

252 On the meeting in Naples, see Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 140-142.

253 Jacopo Nardi, “Esposizione del salmo quinto “Verba mea auribus percipe” esposto in Napoli, e Mandata alla Maestà di Carlo V Imperadore, in nome degli esuli fiorentini e di tutto il popolo Fiorentino,” in Vita di Antonio Giacomini: e altri scritti minori…, edited by Carlo Gargiolli (Florence: Barbera, 1867): 311- 337. For the circumstances of the oration, see Nardi, Istorie, II, 273.

254 Nardi, Esposizione, 320-321. “Dice il profeta: el Signore arà in abominazione colui che è crudele, e sparge il sangue umano, e che esso, cioè David, spererà nella grandezza della misericordia di quello. Tale e tanta è la fiducia che noi abbiamo nella bontà della Maestà tua, o giustissimo monarca: [....] e tale è il mio avversario, dice la nostra città, che si pasce di sangue et è tanto duro e acerbo di sangue et è tanto duro e acerbo verso della sua partria. E David il quale fu mansueto e innocente, e tiene la figura di Cristo, avendo avuto in sua potestà Saul suo inimico, non l’ha offeso. Similmente il popolo fiorentino, imitando in questo la mansuetudine di 82

Nardi repeatedly asserts that David and the republic are one and the same: he asks

Charles V to “send aid to your servant David, that is, your people.”255 And later, “this, Your

Majesty, your David and your meek Popolo Fiorentino request of you.”256 Paolo Simoncelli has suggested—in the same way that Barolsky has with Machiavelli—that the speaker’s invocation of the biblical David must arise from his awareness of Michelangelo’s statue.257 Republican

Florence is David, and the David is republican Florence.

In the Pygmalion and Galatea, the waking statue takes the form of Venus, whose figure incorporates that of Michelangelo’s David. As will be shown, in Renaissance Florence, Venus was celebrated as the goddess of Florentine civic renewal, and an embodiment of spring, and of the city itself. In Bronzino’s painting, as Venus awakens, she inspirits Michelangelo’s David, and thus restores not just Florence, but the Florentine republic.

III.

By c. 1529-30, when Bronzino painted his Pygmalion and Galatea, the characterization of Florence as a beautiful woman was a well-established trope.258 Patriotic enthusiasm could be

David e la benignità di Cristo, non ha mai sparso il sangue de’ suoi avversarii in qualunque mutazione di stato contro alla tirannide: anzi bastandogli di ricuperare la libertà, ha perdonate le passate ingiurie e abbracciati i parenti e gli amici di quegli, e fattigli partecipi del governo universale con gli altri cittadini, come fece ngli anni 1494 e 1527; e al presente, o Sacra Maestà, perdona volentieri ogni ingiuria, e desidera (se possibile fusse) che il suo avversario sia signore di tutto il mondo, salva l’altezza dell’ Imperio romano e la libertà della patria sua.”

255 Nardi, “Esposizione,” 325. “...e manderai al tuo servo David, cio`e al tuo popolo...”

256 Nardi, “Esposizione,” 327. “Questo medesimo, o giustissimo principe, domanda alla Maestà tua David e il mansueto popolo Fiorentino…”

257 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 167.

258As Mary Bergstein has shown, in Renaissance Florence, “the abstract concept of the republican commune was rendered concrete […] by the frequent characterization of Florence as 83 articulated in terms of devotion to Fiorenza, a potent and fruitful figuration whose origins can be tied to expressions of Christian piety, chivalric forms of poetic invention, and classical themes of civic enthusiasm—all of which yield important precedents for her appearance in the Pygmalion and Galatea.259

Fiorenza’s development as a civic icon is interwoven with the city’s religious history.

Mary Bergstein has demonstrated that local devotion, first to Santa Reparata, and later to the

Virgin Mary, helped determine Fiorenza’s iconography. In the middle ages, Florentine enthusiasm for Reparata, a virgin martyr, was particularly strong. According to legend, on

Reparata’s feast day, in the year 405, she appeared to Florentines engaged in battle. Carrying a red banner emblazoned with a lily, she led the Florentines to victory over their enemies, the

Goths; Reparata was thereafter adopted as one of the city’s preeminent saints, and her lily taken as the city’ device (the giglio fiorentino).260 In several ways, Bergstein notes, Santa Reparata offers an “integral iconographic prototype” for later Florentine civic imagery, complete with

“qualities of virginity, lilies, and Florentine independence.”261 When the Virgin Mary eventually superseded Reparata as the city’s icon and protector, these qualities were retained.

a lovely maiden, a goddess, or a queen.” Bergstein, “Marian Politics in Quattrocento Florence: The Renewed Dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore in 1412,” Renaissance Quarterly 44, no. 4 (Winter, 1991): 673-718, 687. On the allegorization of political communities as human bodies, see, for example, John M. Najemy, “The Republic’s Two Bodies: Body Metaphors in Italian Renaissance Political Though,” in Allison Wright, ed., Language and Images of Renaissance Italy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995): 237.

259 On the analogous and contemporary development of “Venezia,” a female embodiment of the city incorporating elements of the Virgin Mary, Venus, Justice, and Dea Roma, see David Rosand, “Venetia Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth,” in David Rosand, ed., Interpretazioni Veneziane: Studi di storia dell’arte in onore di Michelangelo Muraro (Venice: Arsenale, 1983): 177-196.

260 Bergstein, “Marian Politics,” 680.

261 Bergstein, “Marian Politics,” 680.

84

At the end of the thirteenth century, , formerly dedicated to Reparata, was rechristened “Santa Maria del Fiore.” An invented appellation for the Virgin Mary, the title underscores her Florentine citizenship.262 Florentine tradition sets date of the city’s foundation on March 25th, the Feast of the Incarnation; the Fiore or flower of the cathedral’s name cleverly refers both to the Florentine giglio and to the lily associated with the .263 These consonances facilitated the use of Marian imagery in representations of the Florentine state. In a manuscript illustration from the early fourteenth century, a kneeling Fiorenza, accompanied by the giglio, assumes a pose generally reserved for the Virgin Annunciate, and addresses Robert of

Anjou: “Flower of flowers Florentia grows from flowers with honor, because I am governed, O

King, with the reins of virtue and safety.”264 Bergstein has identified a similar blending of civic and Marian iconography in a Florentine commission from the beginning of the fifteenth century, in which the Signoria called for a marble statue of the Virgin, holding a stalk of lilies, to be placed in a prominent location at the portal of the newly rebuilt cathedral.265 Though the statue was never carried out, Bergstein encourages us to “envision a frontal, iconic figure… holding a

262 Ibid, 679.

263 On the traditional dating of the city’s foundation to the 25th of March, see Nicolai Rubinstein, “Vasari’s Painting of The Foundation of Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio,” in Giovanni Ciapelli, ed., Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and The Renaissance, Volume 1: Political Though and the Language of Art and Politics (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004), 131-150. For the date the relation to the Annunciation, see Karla Langedijk, “Review: Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art. Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos by Janet Cox-Rearick,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 20, no. 4 (1990-91): 287-293, 289.

264 “Flos florum, flore Florentia crescit honore, / me qua virtutis rego, rex, frenoque salutis.” The manuscript is the Panegyric to Robert of Anjou of Naples (c. 1330), illustrated by an anonymous follower of Taddeo Gaddi, and housed in the British Library. For its use of Marian symbolism in a figuration of Florence, see Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 93-5.

265 Mary Bergstein, “Marian Politics,” 673. On the statue and Marian Florence, see also Randolph, “Republican Florence, 1400-1434,” in Francis Ames-Lewis, ed. Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012): 119-66 + 137-9.

85 stalk of lilies [who] personified not only the physical and spiritual cathedral in its newly affirmed dedication to the Virgin Mary but the city of Florence itself.”266

Meanwhile, in a kind of punning accumulation of symbolic meaning, Florence’s floral name, association with the lily, and birthday in the spring inspired representations of a Fiorenza who shared characteristics with Flora, the goddess of flowers and spring.267 Personified as lovely Flora, Fiorenza could be celebrated in less obviously pious terms. In the fourteenth century, she appears as a frequent object of chivalric devotion in poems that emphasize her fertility.268 Guido del Palagio, for example, composed lines dedicated to her unabating fruitfulness: “O donna bella mia! O bel paese! […] / Si che Fiorenza sempre si rinfiori.”269

Brunetto Latini praises her in similar terms: “Fioriva, e fece frutto: / sì, ch’ ell’ era di tutto / La

Donna di Toscana.”270 These poems highlight Fiorenza’s ability to support her people.

Donatello’s lost Dovizia (Abundance) statue, datable to c. 1430, has been interpreted as a straightforwardly pagan personification of Florence, explicitly symbolic of the city’s economic success, and closely aligned with this patriotic poetic tradition.271 A civic commission, the

266 Bergstein, “Marian Politics,” 675-6

267 For Flora as a personification of the city, see, for example, Lynette Bosch, “Truth, Time, & Destiny: Some Iconographical Themes in Bronzino’s ‘Primavera’ and ‘Giustizia’,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 27, no. 1 (1983): 73-82, 76.

268 Bergstein, “Marian Politics,” 687-9. On Fiorenza in Tuscan poetry, Bergstein cites further examples in writers such as Giovanni Cavalcanti, Fazio degli Uberti, Antonio di Matteo di Meglio, Bernardo Bellincioni, and others, as well as several anonymous sources.

269 Ibid, 687. “ O my beautiful Lady! O beautiful country! Fiorenza, may you always reflower.”

270 “Blossomed, and brought forth fruit / Yes, she was of all / The Lady of .” Quoted in Bergstein, “Marian Politics,” 687.

271 Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 74. Sarah Blake [Wilk] McHam, “Donatello’s ‘Dovizia’ as an image of Florentine Political Propaganda,” Artibus et Historiae XIV (1986): 9-28, 17-18.

86

Dovizia featured a woman in classicizing dress, standing atop an ancient column erected in the city’s marketplace [fig. 2.8]. Her attributes—a cornucopia clutched in one arm, and a basket of fruit balanced upon her head—identified her as an allegory of wealth and abundance.272

Several scholars have understood the Dovizia as an emblem of the city. David Wilkins, describing the statue as a “tyche or symbol,” has drawn attention to the statue’s material, pietra serena (Florentine limestone), seemingly selected to emphasize her Florentine nature.273

According to Sarah Blake McHam, the Dovizia’s intended function as civic symbol is made evident by the statue’s placement atop an ancient column, in emulation of famous Roman precedents.274 This legacy would have complemented her role as an idol, a beneficent figure begetting literal and economic fruitfulness.275 The selection of a Corinthian column for Dovizia seems noteworthy, because, according to Vitruvius, the order is associated with the qualities of blooming fertility inherent in Flora/Fiorenza, and therefore embodied by the Dovizia:

in temples to Venus, Flora, Proserpine, Spring-Water, and the Nymphs, the Corinthian order will be found to have peculiar significance, because these are delicate divinities and so its rather slender outlines, its flowers, leaves and ornamental volutes will lend propriety where it is due.276

The properties of the Corinthian column identified by Vitruvius seem fitting for the Dovizia, a statue described by Adrian Randolph as a “flourishing and flowering personification of the city,”

272 David G. Wilkins, “Donatello’s Lost Dovizia for the Mercato Vecchio: Wealth and Charity as Florentine Civic Virtues,” The Art Bulletin 65 (1983): 401-23.

273 Wilkins, “Donatello’s Lost Dovizia,” 415.

274 McHam, “Donatello’s ‘Dovizia’,” 11, 15.

275 Cole, “Perpetual Exorcism,” 62.

276 Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, 1.2.5, transl. William Hicks Morgan (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1914), 15. For a description of the column, see Wilkins, “Donatello’s Lost Dovizia,” 407.

87 one which “renders the corpus politicum of Florence visible as a fertile and desirable woman.”277

As such, the statue was especially designed, in McHam’s words, to “remind citizens of their government’s beneficent rule.”278

Fiorenza’s association with the city’s welfare made her an excellent mechanism for ideological imagery. In the second half of the fifteenth century, she appears in images associated with Medicean political aims, her former Christian iconography overshadowed by the classicizing characteristics shared by Flora and the Dovizia. A bronze portrait medal of Lorenzo

“il Magnifico” de' Medici displays, on its reverse, a woman seated under a laurel tree holding a stalk of lilies; inscriptions there identify her as FLORENTIA.279 Randolph has explained this

Medicean promotion of Fiorenza as the extension of an antique convention, in which the relationship between citizen and state was figured in terms of romantic desire. Fiorenza, he argues, became a “desirable woman whom the oligarchical patriciate felt duty-bound to protect, constructing […] citizen-viewers from this caste as heterosexual lovers of the state.”280

The best-known artistic example of this blending of civic and amorous themes is certainly Botticelli’s Primavera (c. 1480), which, together with Poliziano’s Stanze per la Giostra,

277 Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 14, 20, 44-46, 71.

278 McHam, “Donatello’s ‘Dovizia’,” 27.

279 Niccolò di Giovanni Fiorentino, bronze medal of Lorenzo de’ Medici, with verso of Florentia, c. 1490. The Medal is inscribed MAGNUS LAURENTIUS. MEDICES TUTELA PATRIE FLORENTIA. OP. NI. F. S. See Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art. Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1984), 180.

280 Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 74. Randolph’s description of the relationship between Lorenzo and Fiorenza as constructed by the portrait-medal offers an interesting parallel to the relationship between Francesco Guardi and the Venus on the cover to his portrait. As Jodi Cranston has shown, the practice of creating allegorical portrait covers developed out of the traditional relationship between the recto and verso of allegorical medals. See Jodi Cranston, The Poetics of Portraiture, 20-21.

88 and Lorenzo de’ Medici’s own poetic output, has been shown by Charles Dempsey to invoke the imagery of Venus and Flora in a patriotic celebration of springtime, love, and personal and communal renewal [fig. 2.9]. “All three,” Dempsey writes, “locate their themes of love within the rituals and festivals of the city, thus specifically identifying them with the aspirations and fortunes of Florence.”281 Botticelli’s Primavera is an incredibly complex and nuanced picture, and, at least since Aby Warburg’s late nineteenth-century treatment, the scholarship surrounding it equally so.282 Dempsey’s sophisticated analysis brings together the most significant previous approaches, synthesizing past material and elaborating upon the relevant themes.

281 Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 144. The primary texts thought relevant to Botticelli’s compositions—especially works by Dante, Poliziano, Ficino, and Landino—are precisely those which, in the previous chapter, I have argued provide important literary context for Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea. In several articles dedicated to Botticelli’s paintings, Max Marmor has proposed that Botticelli’s Primavera depends upon the painter’s knowledge of Landino’s commentary on Dante. He argues that the painting responds in particular to those passages recounting the poet’s early morning Venusian encounters—i.e., exactly those which, in the previous chapter, I linked to the Pygmalion and Galatea. (Marmor, “From Purgatory to the ‘Primavera,’”; Marmor, “A Pattern for the Primavera,” Source: Notes in the History of Art, 23, no. 1 [Fall, 2013]: 9-16.) In addition, Botticelli’s Primavera, Birth of Venus, and Pallas and the Centaur have been repeatedly associated with Poliziano’s Stanze per la Giostra, whose text and illustrations I have cited as important models for Bronzino’s painting. The Pallas and the Centaur, moreover, has been reinterpreted by Salvatore Settis and Adrian Randolph as an image of a Venus Victrix related to the banner of Giuliano de’ Medici recorded in Poliziano’s Stanze per la Giostra. Botticelli himself, moreover, has been proposed as the author of the woodcut illustration of Giuliano praying to Venus before his joust, examined in the previous chapter as a potential artistic precedent for Bronzino’s Pgymalion and Galatea. This is hardly surprising, since, in arguing for Venus’ role as an inspirational goddess in Bronzino’s painting, I drew attention to the same vernacular tradition that forms the poetic material of Botticelli’s paintings, one in which, according to Dempsey, “the idea of love objectified in the figure of the beloved is closely linked to the concept of human ennoblement and fulfillment.” (Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 17.)

282 Aby Warburg, Sandro Botticelli’s “Geburt der Venus” und “Frühling”: eine Unterssuchung über die Vorstellungen von der Antike in der italienischen Frührenaissance (Hamburg and Leipzig: Voss, 1893) translated and reprinted in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance (Los Angeles: Getty, 1999). For bibliography and review of the scholarship, see the introduction to Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 3-19.

89

Dempsey grounds his study of the Primavera by restoring the title put forward by Vasari,

“Venere dinotando la Primavera” (“Venus denoting the Spring”).283 Examining Florentine civic rituals, festivals and tournaments, popular topoi, vernacular literature, and erudite humanist treatises, Dempsey locates in the Laurentian motto “le tems revient” an ideation of the city itself, with the identity of Florence under Lorenzo being not a static entity, but a process: the city’s own renewal and rebirth.284 In Lorenzo’s Florence, Fiorenza evolved from Flora into Venus, and, guided by Dempsey’s reading of the painting as a narrative sequence, we witness that evolution captured in Botticelli’s Primavera. Dempsey describes the subject of Primavera as “the concept of renovatio mundi,” a performance in which the protagonists enact the world’s regeneration:

In Zephyr’s rape of Chloris we are shown the initial growth of the season from the first rough blowing of the inseminating wet wind (the genitalis aura) over the bare earth, causing it to put forth the first flowers, followed by its early abundance in Flora, strewing the earth with all the flowers of the spring, and completed by its fullness in Venus, the goddess of the month of April and the generative spirit of the season’s renewal.285 In Botticelli’s Primavera, Flora and Venus both appear, with the former—as fecund goddess of spring and flowers—widely interpreted in art historical scholarship as a figuration of the city.286

“Flora-Fiorenza,” Janet Cox-Rearick writes, “represents not only the city over which Lorenzo rules, but the mythic origins of Florence in spring at the very moment of the renewal of

283 “Venere le Grazie la fioriscono, dinotando la Primavera.” Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, III, 312. Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 24, 63-64.

284 Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 18. On Lorenzo’s motto and Florentine civic iconography, see Janet Cox-Rearick, “Themes of Time and Rule at Poggio a Caiano: The Portico Frieze of Lorenzo il Magnifico,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 26, no. 2 (1982): 167-210, esp. 182-5.

285 Ibid., 17, 33.

286 See, for example, Paul Barolsky, “Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and the Poetic Imagination of Italian Renaissance Art,” Arion 8 (2000): 5-35, 6: “Flora…is the beautiful personification of Florence herself, of Fiorenza, the city of fiori or flowers. The lovely golden fruit of Botticelli’s bower evoke the palle or globes in the arms of the Medici, who saw themselves as the promoters of the return of the golden age.”

90 nature.”287 In ancient and Renaissance treatments, however, Flora and Venus were often indistinguishable, a conflation arising from their shared association with flowers, fertility, rebirth, and, most importantly, spring.288

In Dempsey’s reading of the painting, Venus and Flora are not separate entities, but dependent elements recording a transformation that is itself the embodiment of spring, and therefore Florence. The picture, he argues, begins at left, with Zephyr’s rape of Chloris, who, as a result, “causes the earth to put for the first flowers of the season,” and is herself the same as

Flora.289 Next Flora, who, Dempsey writes,

is by definition Primavera, the abundant Hour of the first blossoming goodness of the youthful spring, the goddess who precedes and prefigures the full potency and beauty of the season—its venusta—that is denoted by Venus. She is also by definition the prima verrà, the first muse who precedes and prefigures the complete concept of love that is again denoted by Venus. [….] As love she is Venus by definition, and by definition love is theme of Botticelli’s portrait of her. She is the animating spirit as well as the tangible embodiment of the renovatio mundi (Le tems revient).290

The painting includes, in the oranges that hang from the trees, the impresa or symbol of the

Medici family (the palle), and in its figuration of spring, the Primavera enacts the motto of

Lorenzo, the city’s first citizen. “As a work of art,” Dempsey writes, the Primavera “supremely

287 Janet Cox-Rearick, “Themes of Time and Rule,” 186.

288 Julius Held, “Flora, Goddess and Courtesan,” in Millard Meiss, editor, De artibus opuscula XL; essays in honor of Erwin Panofsky (New York: NYU, 1961): 201-18.

289 Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 65.

290 Ibid., 130, 137.

91 exemplifies Lorenzo’s ambition to attain a new level of civic and cultural perfection deeply embedded in the new Laurentian myth of Florence.”291

This precisely Florentine emphasis on the process of renewal is considered the motivation behind the frequent elision of Venus and Fiorenza in Medicean imagery created under Duke

Cosimo I de’ Medici. Beginning in the late 1530s—almost from the first moment of Cosimo’s rule—Venus appears in Medicean images, understood as a straightforward attempt to present

Cosimo’s reign as the renovatio of the Laurentian Golden Age.292 One of Cosimo’s first artistic commissions in his role of Duke was the Venus-Fiorenza fountain designed by Bronzino’s friend

Niccolò Tribolo, in which a nude figuration of the city wrings out her hair in the established antique pose of Venus Anadyomene [fig. 2.10].293 Dubbed Fiorenza by Vasari, there is no question that Tribolo’s Venus was designed as a personification of the city.294 Claudio

Pizzorusso has described the Venus-Fiorenza fountain as demonstrating the “revival of the esthetic ideals of the Laurentian circle,” proposing that the garden of which the fountain was a central element was conceived (perhaps by Bronzino’s other friends Luca Martini and Benedetto

291 Ibid., 159. For similarly political interpretations of the painting, see, for example, Horst Bredekamp, Sandro Botticelli, La Primavera: Florenz als Garten der Venus (Frankfurt Am Main: Fischer, 1988); Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 78-83.

292 See, for example, Rebekah Tipping Compton, “A Cultural Icon: The Currency of Venus in Sixteenth-Century Florence” (PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2009), 2. Henk Th. Van Veen, Cosimo De’ Medici and his Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), 9.

293 On the fountain see Claudio Pizzorusso, “Galileo in the Garden: Observations on the sculptural furnishings of Florentine gardens between the sixteenth and seventh centuries,” in Cristina Acidini Luchinat, ed., The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002): 113. On Venus-Fiorenza imagery in Giambologna’s fountain after Tribolo’s design, see Michael Cole, Ambitious Form. Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011), 164, 185, 330 n 45.

294 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 79. “Una fiorenza, a dimostrare che dai detti monti Asinaio e Falterona vengono l’acque d’Arno e Mugnone a Fiorenza.”

92

Varchi) as a conscious reflection of Poliziano’s Stanze per la Giostra and Botticelli’s Primavera,

“focused as it was on the mythology of Venus Anadyomene-Fiorenza, the genetrix of an eternal springtime in the kingdom of Flora-Fiorenza.”295

In his projects for Cosimo I, Bronzino made use of the same civic mythology. In his design for the Primavera-Venus, a tapestry completed in 1546, Bronzino portrays Fiorenza as a nude Venus, attended by cupids, scattering flowers [fig. 2.11]. Accompanying the goddess are signs of the zodiac: the Ram (Aries) for March, the Bull (Taurus) for April, and the Twins

(Gemini), for May. These signs emphasize Venus’ role as goddess of the springtime, and as

Lynette Bosch writes, “the renewal accompanying the start of the Florentine year.”296 The

Primavera, together with his Dovizia (the first tapestry woven in Florence, clearly recalling

Donatello’s statue), and Justice, belongs to a series of that feature female allegorical figures in compositions demonstrating an erudite literary sensibility rallied in celebration of

Cosimo’s reign.297 According to Janet Cox-Rearick, in the Primavera-Venus tapestry, “the

295 Pizzorusso, “Galileo in the Garden,” 115.

296 Lynette Bosch, “Time, Truth, and Destiny,” 77. On the tapestries, see Janet Cox-Rearick, George R. Goldner, and Carmen Bambach, eds., Drawings of Bronzino (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010), 150-153. Bronzino’s Primavera was first identified as Venus in 1939 by Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939). Ernst Gombrich suggested that Vasari’s description of Botticelli’s Primavera (“Venere, che le Grazie la fioriscono, dinotando la primavera”) was colored Vasari’s experience of Bronzino’s version (Gombrich, “Botticelli’s Mythologies, 8 n.4) but it seems much more likely that the reverse is the case—Bronzino’s Primavera-Venus was influence by Botticelli’s. Bronzino’s London Allegory of Venus, which was given as a political gift to Francis I, and features Venus so prominently, is as receptive to varying iconographical interpretations as Botticelli’s pictures, and beyond the scope of this discussion.

297 The tapestries were woven by Jan Roost in Florence. On the modelli, see Carmen Bambach, “Allegorical Scene of Justice Liberating Innocence (modello for tapestry), ca. 1545-46” in Carmen Bambach, (ed.), Janet Cox-Rearick, George R. Goldner, The Drawings of Bronzino. With Philippe Costamagna, Marzia Faietti and Elizabeth Pilliod. Exhibition Catalogue. (New 93 theme of Duke Cosimo’s rule and the restoration of the Golden Age to Florence is signified by the Medici topos of the Return of Spring.”298 Connecting Bronzino’s design with drawings of

Flora with Cupids by Francesco Salviati and Venus with Capricorn and Aries by Pontormo,

Cox-Rearick concludes that Bronzino’s Primavera is “Venus, Primavera, and Flora—facets of a triple symbol long familiar in Medicean art and poetry.”299

It is by no means clear, however, that Venus could only be summoned as a civic symbol in an overt Medicean context. In a portrait by Francesco Salviati datable to c. 1545, an unidentified young man, clad in black with splashes of red, sits framed against a pair of green curtains, gathered behind his head [fig. 2.12].300 His long limbs are twisted into a seated figura serpentinata, while his tousled brown hair sets off his smooth, skin. To his left and right, at either side of the curtains, the landscape opens into broad views of the hilly countryside, where, at left, a Florentine cityscape appears. Closer by, set just beyond the young man’s shoulder, three emblems of Florence are inserted into the landscape: a muscular river-god, Arno, reclines beside the Marzocco, heraldic lion of Florence, and a pale lily, from which a tiny nude

York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010): 150- 153. 298 Janet Cox-Rearick, “Friendly Rivals: Bronzino and Salviati at the Medici Court, 1543-48,” Master Drawings 43, no. 3 (Fall, 2005): 292-313, 304.

299 Cox-Rearick, “Friendly Rivals,” 305.

300 The portrait is in the Art Museum, and is published in Gloria Fossi, Italian Art: Panting, Sculpture, Architecture from the Origins to the Present Day (Florence: Giunti Editore, 2000), 200. Salviati was born in Florence in 1510, and abandoned the city for Rome in 1531, following the patron to whom he owes his name, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, one of three wealthy Cardinals who served as leaders of the Republican exiles. Salviati returned to Florence in 1539 in order to participate (with Bronzino and Tribolo, etc.) in the creation of ephemera for the wedding of Duke Cosimo and Eleonora. Salviati spent the mid-1540s in Florence, before again leaving the city. He died in Rome in 1563. On Salviati, see Catherine Monbeig-Goguel ed., Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), o la bella maniera (Paris-Milan: Musee du ; Electa, 1998.

94

Venus is born.301 The unidentified subject of this portrait may have been a Medici partisan, but it is not necessarily so. The common factor uniting these emblems, set into a Florentine landscape near a view of the city, appears straightforward and uncomplicated: they are the symbols of Florence. Venus plays a similar, though more nuanced, role in Bronzino’s

Pygmalion and Galatea.

Bronzino’s painting incorporates key symbols of the Florentine civic vocabulary, but they are reversed, gender-shifted, and set into a narrative that obscures their political meaning. The presentation of Michelangelo’s David is anything but straightforward. Far less so, in fact, than the reproduction of the Donatellesque Martelli David in the background of Bronzino’s Ugolino

Martelli, the subject of the next chapter. In both the Pygmalion and the Ugolino Martelli, the incorporation of a statue of David seems intended as a means of signaling affiliation with the republican cause. But in the case of the Pygmalion and Galatea, made during the republic, the statue aligns the patron with the side of power; in the Ugolino Martelli, painted after the republic’s fall, it marks the sitter as subversive. Paradoxically, in the Pygmalion, Bronzino cloaks and transforms Michelangelo’s David, while in the Ugolino Martelli, his presentation of the Martelli David is straightforward, almost blasé.

An explanation for this puzzling difference may arise from considering the specific statues represented, and the genres of the paintings in question. Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino

Martelli includes a private household object, a family heirloom—a possession hardly likely to inspire criticism from the Medici establishment. On the other hand, the allegorical Pygmalion and Galatea incorporates perhaps the period’s most recognizable symbol of the republic, and

301 For the Marzocco as the symbol of Florence, see Kurt W. Forster, “Metaphors of Rule. Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz 25 (1971), 79.

95 brings it to life. In the Pygmalion and Galatea, the statue’s fame and the subject’s richness allow the painter to create an image far more meaningful than had he simply reproduced

Michelangelo’s giant.

IV.

Bronzino’s works for the Medici are nearly always understood to register intricate ideological meaning, the images seen as an arena of invention and elaboration for Medicean

“cultural politics.”302 Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea, commissioned during the last republic as part of a republican project, is no less complex or consequential. The painting incorporates well-established artistic and iconographical motifs in order to present a highly partisan picture that can be read as a celebration of the establishment of the last republic and, at the same time, a call for its defense.

In his Primavera-Venus for Duke Cosimo, Bronzino made active use of the political symbolism elaborated in the Florence of Botticelli and Poliziano. Yet while his Medicean Venus is uniformly interpreted as a Florentine political allegory, the prominent role played by Venus in

Bronzino’s republican Pygmalion and Galatea has not been afforded similar ideological weight.

And although scholars frequently liken the appearance of Bronzino’s Venusian Galatea to the goddesses of Botticelli—the latter understood as highly ideological Florentine symbols—they have not considered whether this artistic indebtedness might imply a concomitant iconographic correspondence.303

302 I take the phrase from Eisenbichler, The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici.

303 The comparison generally derives from formal commonalities assumed to derive from the antique. Currie, for example, draws attention to similarities of classical derivation, gesture, impending movement, general bearing, and posture. Currie was among the first to specifically connect the Galatea with Botticelli’s Venuses (“Secularised Sculptural Imagery,” 241-2). Paul Barolsky likewise connects Bronzino’s Galatea to Botticelli’s goddesses without looking for an ideological link. Although he sees Botticelli’s Venus pictures as endowed with civic weight, 96

In particular, the appearance of Bronzino’s Galatea is compared to that of the protagonist of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus—both figures identified, like Tribolo’s Fiorenza-Venus, as Venus

Anadyomene. My discussion of Botticelli has thus far focused on the symbolism of his

Primavera, however, much of what has been said about the Florentine civic iconography of that painting is equally applicable, according to Dempsey, to the Birth of Venus. For Dempsey, the

Birth of Venus should more rightly be called the Advent of Venus, “referring to the annual return of the goddess in the springtime, which hence identifies Botticelli’s painting as a return to the same theme of the springtime, though in a more thoroughly classical manner, that he had earlier treated in the Primavera. Both paintings thus fully embody the ancient origins and meaning of

Lorenzo’s motto, le tems revient.”304 Like the Venus of the Primavera, the protagonist of

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus symbolizes Florentine civic renewal.

Similarly rendered, the Venus of the Pygmalion and Galatea invokes this artistic tradition, and serves a congruent ideological purpose. In the Pygmalion and Galatea, Venus strews no flowers, but the decoration on the altar alludes to her role as goddess of the Florentine spring, thereby highlighting her civic import. Carved on the side of the altar, small figures of

Venus and Mars appear in bas-relief, accompanied by two ram’s heads. As god of March, Mars, like Venus, rules over the spring. More importantly, he is the god under whose zodiac sign—the

Barolsky, like Currie, cites wit, rather than ideology to account for Bronzino’s artistic choices. He observes that “when Bronzino pictures Pygmalion filled with love, praying to the very goddess of love, he did something wonderfully appropriate, indeed witty. For he pictured Pygmalion’s beloved statue in the image and likeness of Venus herself, as the type of classical statue which had descended from Praxiteles, suggesting the exemplary beauty of Venus to which the artist, in more ways than one, aspired. The type of ancient image of or Venus adapted by Bronzino for his Venusian Pygmalion had already been employed by Botticelli in his Birth of Venus. Paul Barolsky, “Looking at Venus: A Brief History of Erotic Art,” 1999, 94. For the civic content of Botticelli’s Primavera, see Barolsky, “Botticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and the Poetic Imagination,” 6.

304 Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 44.

97

Ram (Aries)—the foundation of Florence occurred.305 For this reason, Venus rides a ram in

Bronzino’s Primavera-Venus, the tapestry celebrating the revival of the city’s Golden Age under

Duke Cosimo. Janet Cox-Rearick, examining the iconography of Florentine renewal, has written that “an essential part of the myth of Florence

was the identification of the city with the zodiac sign of Aries (corresponding roughly with the month of March) and with Mars, considered in traditional astrological though to be the “ruler” of Aries. […] The destiny of Florence was seen as inextricably linked with Aries and Mars. Hence, when the Ram, symbolizing Aries, and Mars appear in Florentine art—particularly when they appear together—we can be virtually certain that allusion is being made to the special astrological destiny of the city.306

This being the case, Bronzino’s portrayal of Venus, Mars, and the Ram together on the altar in the Pygmalion and Galatea strongly indicates that the painting’s iconography functions in a civic register.307 Signaling renewal and the Florentine spring, these symbols, understood together with

305 See, for example, Vasari’s Foundation of Florence (note 260 above) in which a ram appears in the sky. See also Carol F. Lewine, “Aries, Taurus, and Gemini in Raphael’s Sacrifice at Lystra,” The Art Bulletin 72, no. 2 (Jun., 1990): 271-293, 277. Lewine develops the iconographical interpretations of the zodiac signs in Bronzino’s Primavera as established by Bosch and Cox-Rearick.

306 Janet Cox-Rearick, “Themes of Time and Rule,” 188-189. Cox-Rearick’s interests are Medicean, but her research demonstrates that this civic use of astrology is widespread long before its adaptation to the family’s particular aims. She notes that the iconography of Aries dates to “ancient times” and the Florentine Baptistery was thought by Poliziano to be a temple of Mars.

307 Responding to the potential astrological symbolism (with the sacrificial heifer read as the bull of Taurus) Liana Cheney has suggested that “perhaps Pontormo envisions Francesco Guardi as an image of Mars, the God of War, while Bronzino’s painting relates to Venus, the Goddess of Love, an antidote to Mars and War.” This seems to me entirely unlikely, given my reading of Venus’s symbolism in the previous chapter. If, however, the signs on the altar are to be understood as signs of the zodiac, the eagle and man’s head on the urn may perhaps allude to Jupiter, Venus’s father. Sigismondo Fanti’s Triompho della fortuna (printed in Venice in 1527) devotes a page to Jupiter/Michelangelo, the sculptor pictured near a statue of Venus Anadyomene. It would be charming to imagine that the eagle on the urn draws our attention to Michelangelo as sculptor of the David, but it is not clear that a connection between Jupiter and the artist was a popular enough at the time to warrant such a use. On the print, see Geraldine A. Johnson, “Michelangelo, Fortunetelling, & the Formation of Artistic Canons in Fanti’s Triompho 98 the figure of Galatea-Venus-David, may allude to the rebirth of the republic in 1527. As Venus brings spring to Florence, David, and the republic each return to life.

The significance of the springtime topos for Duke Cosimo—restorer of the Medicean

Golden Age—has been treated as self-evident. During the last republic, however, when

Bronzino painted his Pygmalion and Galatea, the motif was hardly less relevant: the last republic was construed as a restoration of the earlier republican government headed by Soderini at the start of the century. Bartolomeo Cavalcanti’s republican military oration of 1530, introduced in the previous chapter, provides an example of this approach: the speaker’s rhetoric prioritizes continuity with the past, stressing the themes of rebirth and renewal.

According to Cavalcanti, the city’s glorious republican history had been revived and its liberty returned, not newly invented. In this mode, Cavalcanti reminds his listeners “thus, after many years, our much desired liberty has been restored,” and, “our republic is reborn in a body that is beautiful, yet doubtless weak and unsteady, deprived of that force, which, once given her, will render her strong and vigorous, and perhaps eternal.”308 The young soldiers of Cavalcanti’s audience are thus beseeched to secure the longevity of the beloved and newly reborn republic by fighting in her defense.

In several ways, the symbolic vocabulary of Cavalcanti’s speech and Bronzino’s

Pgymalion and Galatea correspond, connecting both to the circumstances of the Siege.

Cavalcanti’s elaboration upon Fiorenza’s beauty and the theme of rebirth ties his oration to the traditional identification of Florence with the Venusian spring. His oration accordingly rehearses

di Fortuna,” in Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew, eds., Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 2001): 199-205.

308 Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 13-14.

99 the same civic themes that emerge in the Pygmalion and Galatea, where Fiorenza—become specifically republican by the allusion to Michelangelo’s David—returns to life.

In the Pygmalion and Galatea, a new morning dawns as the republic is reborn in the beautiful figure of Galatea, whose solidly muscular body is at once powerful and impotent, vital and inanimate. Through her appearance, Bronzino makes Galatea the personification of republic as well as its defenders. Although this discussion of the Pygmalion and Galatea is divided into these two individual chapters, separating the nature of Pygmalion’s love from its object, the distinction does not appear in the painting itself. Venus is love, and inspires love; she is

Fiorenza, the object of Florentine devotion, and, in recalling the David, also a collective embodiment of the city’s patriotic youth—Fiorenza’s devotees. These many facets resolve into a cohesive whole if we remember that, as Charles Dempsey has argued for the Primavera, the painting’s material is itself, Love. “Where there is the beloved,” Dempsey writes, “there too is

Venus, and where there is Venus there is also the spring and the first day of the world.”309 And in the spring, Fiorenza.

309 Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 150.

100

CHAPTER THREE: Painting David in the City of Goliath

“Divine Providence has now seen fit to strike down the insolence of the haughty giant, and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the hand of his servant David (provided for us in this valiant young man).” --Jacopo Nardi to Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi (in praise of the murderer of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici), January 18th, 1537.310

When the Siege of Florence came to an end, Ugolino Martelli was still a child. The last republic fell in August of 1530, a month before his twelfth birthday. Seven years later, in the autumn of 1537, Bronzino painted the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, in which Ugolino—now a young man of eighteen—appears together with signs of his republican partisanship [fig. 3.1].311

In the introduction to this dissertation, I presented Ugolino as the target of political censure, condemned for his allegiance to the most determined enemies of the Medici Duchy.312 In this chapter, I examine the ways in which his portrait reflects these subversive sympathies.

310 “Poiche alla divina Providentia è piaciuto abbattere l’insolentia del superbo gigante, et iam erexit cornu salutis nobis in manu David pueri sui (ché tale è stato a noi quel valoroso giovane)…” The italics are in the original, where Nardi is quoting from Luke, I. 69, although he has altered the text from “in domo” to “in manu”—that is, the salvation of Florence is now in David’s hand, rather than in his house, as in the original. Nardi’s letter is reprinted in Archivio Storico Italiano. Jacopo Nardi to Niccolò Ridolfi, 18 January 1537, ASI, new series, 1 (Florence: Olschki, 1855): 215-216. For a discussion, see von Albertini, Firenze dalla Repubblica, 214.

311 Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. The painting is undated, but Martelli leaves Florence in the fall of 1537, and for stylistic reasons this date is generally treated as a terminus ante quem. The most recent publications on the portrait agree to a dating just before Ugolino’s departure; see Cropper, “Reading Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” in Natali-Falciani, Bronzino: Artist and Poet, 247. Brock, “un Homère florentin?”, 338. The evidence of a frame, purchased by Ugolino’s father Luigi for a portrait of the former in 1542, has been determined irrelevant and/or inconclusive. For the frame, see Cropper, “Prolegomena,” 152.

312 See Introduction, page 1. Ugolino’s first biographer is Marco Antonio Romoli, Notizie Risguardanti la Vita di Monsignore Ugolino Martelli, Vescovo di Glandeva, del Dottore Marco 101

Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli responds to contemporary Florentine ideological and political issues with remarkable specificity and precision of meaning, despite a lack of obvious references to recent events. Instead, the painting relies on a purposeful collapse of time, employing the past as a means to communicate republican sentiment in the Medici-dominated present.313 Portrayed in three-quarter length, Ugolino appears lightly perched on a simple wooden bench in the immediate foreground of the image. At his right, a red table, partially draped in green, emerges from beyond the frame. With one hand, Ugolino props a book upright

Antonio Romoli, dedicate all’ illustrissimo Signor Abate Leonardo Martelli (Florence: Andrea Bonducci, 1759). The authoritative biography is Vanni Bramanti, "Ritratto di Ugolino Martelli (1519-1592),” Schede Umanistiche: rivista semestrale dell' Archivio Umanistico Rinascimentale Bolognese 2 (1999): 5-54. Bramanti revisited the life of Martelli a decade later in his introduction to Ugolino Martelli, Lettere a Pier Vettori 1536-1577 (Rome: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2009). Bramanti is also responsible for the DBI entry: “Ugolino Martelli” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 71 (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 2008). http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ugolino-martelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/. Nearly all of the biographical information regarding Martelli in this text is, to some extent, the result of or confirmed by Bramanti’s labors. One of Bramanti’s main sources is the meticulous collection of notes kept by Ugolino’s father Luigi Martelli. They are housed in the Archivio di Stato in Florence in the Carte Strozziane.

313 In this chapter, the investigation of deliberate comparisons with the past is largely devoted to issues of iconography and symbolic reference. Nevertheless, Bronzino’s artistic approach has frequently been discussed in terms of stylistic anachronism. (See, for example, Charles McCorquodale, who writes: “Whoever examines the highly-wrought surfaces of Bronzino’s paintings will search in vain for stylistic antecedents or parallels among other painters of the early sixteenth century in Italy, his comparable mastery of line, and his uniquely expressive and emphatic use of it has its origins in the preceding century.” McCorquodale, Bronzino [New York: Harper & Row, 1981, 13). My thinking on the subject of collapsed time has been informed by the work of Thomas L. Green, who, in his essay on “History and Anachronism,” outlines a taxonomy which includes “creative anachronism”—that which “confronts and uses the conflict of period styles self-consciously and creatively to dramatize the itinerary, the diachronic passage out of the remote past into the emergent present.” (“History and Anachronism,” in The Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance Literature [New York: Columbia UP, 1986], 221). See also his book, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1982). For anachronism in Renaissance art, see the joint writings of Christopher Wood and Alexander Nagel: “Interventions: toward a new model of Renaissance anachronism,” Art Bulletin 87, no. 3 (Sept., 2005): 403-415, expanded in The Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010).

102 on his thigh, while two more volumes rest upon the table. One of these lies open, oriented outward towards the viewer. Dropping a finger lightly down upon the text, Ugolino guides us to a particular phrase in the ninth book of Homer’s Iliad: “Agamemnon stood.” While gesturing to

Bronzino’s neatly copied Greek, Ugolino looks pointedly over his shoulder, his eyes directing us towards a statue of David with the head of Goliath, standing on a high pedestal in the background. The courtyard is otherwise empty.

The expansive background area, although structured with precise perspectival geometry and treated with a uniform source of light, is far from convincing in the creation of believable illusionistic space. Strong vertical features and sharply cutting orthogonals collapse the image from three dimensions to two: distant elements defy recession and seem instead to crowd forward, trapping the figure at the surface of the image. Diagonals formed by moldings connect

Ugolino’s eyes to the David behind him, and background columns act like exclamation points over foreground books. These vigorous forms control the viewer’s gaze across the surface of the image, exerting a constant pull between Ugolino, the written text beside him, and the statue beyond.

The fictive space is severe and cold, with pale surfaces organized and defined by a skin of dusty blue architectural details.314 This slightly greyish hue echoes the sapphire tone of the book-covers, a color which appears more brilliantly in the deep blue silk that peeks from slashes in Ugolino’s black hose. Creamy skin set into shallow depth against varying tones of rich blue, deep blue-black, and dusty grey gives the painting a cameo-like appearance.

314 For the architectural setting, see J.K. Lydecker, “The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence” (PhD diss., John Hopkins University, 1987), 204-5. Kalle Lundahl has recently proposed that the setting of the Ugolino Martelli is located in the present day Ginnasio Liceo at Via Zannetti, n. 8. There is so little left of the original structure that his hypothesis cannot be proved. Lundahl, “The Architectural Setting in the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli by Bronzino” Konsthistorisk tidskrift 82, no. 1 (2013): 26-35.

103

Behind the figure, regularly alternating areas of light and shadow on the courtyard walls methodically divide the surface of the image—vertical divisions that create a matrix onto which

Ugolino’s figure appears attached. Borders between zones visually align with critical points of motion within his body (shoulders, elbows, knees, and wrists), thereby seeming to isolate and control his form. The figure is fixed, yet still lithe and supple: his twisting figura serpentinata—continued by his gaze—conveys movement while making any further motion impossible. Ugolino is left stranded in the foreground of the painting, pinned like a butterfly against the picture plane. Elegantly yet soberly dressed, posed against the unmistakably Tuscan background together with his books, Ugolino draws attention to a Florentine icon, and asks the viewer to contemplate an ancient text.

The civic connotations of the portrait are immediately evident: the architectural setting creates a strong sense of place, its materials and forms an insistent reminder of Ugolino’s

Florentine identity.315 Equally explicit is the statue of David with the Head of Goliath in the background, which “must,” as Andreas Beyer writes, “be understood here as a deliberate allusion to the iconography of the city of Florence.”316 Known as the Martelli David, the statue is a

315 On the use of pietra serena in Bronzino’s portraits as a means of establishing the sitter’s so- called fiorentinità, see, for example, Philippe Costamagna, “The Portraits of Bronzino,” in Bambach et. al, The Drawings of Bronzino: 51-60, 57. In addition, allusions to the designs of Michelangelo appear throughout: Ugolino’s figure, like that of several of Bronzino’s portrait- subjects from the 1530s, is dependent upon Michelangelo’s Giuliano de’ Medici in the San Lorenzo Medici Chapel. (See Chapter 4, page 171). Elizabeth Cropper attributes the allusion to Michelangelo there (and in the decorative elements of the window) to Bronzino’s investigation of a Florentine style (“Preparing to Finish,” 176). Philippe Costamagna has argued that these references to Michelangelo “likely indicate their republican sympathies” (“The Portraits of Bronzino,” 57). See also page 18, note 47 in the Introduction above.

316 Andreas Beyer, Portraits: A History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), 175. On the significance of attributes like the David in Bronzino’s portrait, Beyer writes that although “dispassionate ‘composure’ has been identified as a common feature of mannerist portraits […] the inner essence of the sitter was communicated, largely through requisites and accessories, the use of which was not new but became increasingly significant.” 104 fifteenth-century work today housed in the National Gallery in Washington [fig. 3.2]. During the sixteenth century, it was believed to be a work by Donatello.317 The partisan nature of these references, and their precise significance for Ugolino, is less straightforward.

In the twentieth century, the Ugolino Martelli was often understood as the subject’s shrewd statement of loyalty to the Medici Dukes.318 In this view, the portrait acts as a medium through which the Martelli family aligns itself with the newly established duchy. These claims would seem justified by the government appointments of Ugolino’s father (a career bureaucrat) and validated by Bronzino’s later role as painter to Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo. Lack of information about Ugolino’s later career encouraged assumptions such as that of Randolph Starn, who described the subject of Bronzino’s painting as “one of the prize literati of Cosimo de’

Medici.”319 More recently, Bronzino scholars have turned their attention to the academic life of the painter and his subjects; such research has made the idea of an overt Medicean agenda less viable, causing the portrait to be reframed as a quietly literary and politically conformist expression of generalized Florentine patriotism.320

317 On the Martelli David, see page 147 below.

318 See Rudolf Wildmoser, "Das Bildnis des Ugolino Martelli von Agnolo Bronzino,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 1, no. 31 (1989): 181-214, 203. Wildmoser’s concludes that the painting’s symbolic elements express an explicit desire by the Martelli family to connect themselves with the Medici.

319 Randolph Starn, Donato Giannotti and his Epistolae (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1968), 161. The error is also noted by Bramanti in "Ritratto,” 11.

320 On Bronzino as poet, the fundamental text is Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet. For the painter and his subjects’ academic lives, see, for example, Cecchi, "Ritratti di Poeti.” Interest in Bronzino’s poetic output necessarily emphasizes to his ties to humanist circles, particularly his friendship with Varchi and other letterati exiles. Outside the context of the ducal court, his interaction with a community known to include subversive elements becomes more apparent. For the political sentiments of Varchi’s circle, see, for example, Salvatore Lo Re, "‘Chi potrebbe mai, a questi tempi, badare a lettere?’ Benedetto Varchi, Piero Vettori e la crisi Fiorentina del 1537," Studi Storici 43, no. 2 (April-June 2002): 367-409, and Valerio Vianello, Il 105

Neither interpretive model accounts for the fact that in 1548, little over a decade after the painting was probably complete, Martelli would leave Florence as a political exile. He traveled first to Rome, where he joined the Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi, a central figure within the

Florentine anti-Medicean oligarchy, before taking a secretarial position with , youngest son of Filippo, the infamous rebel leader.321 At the court of Caterina de’ Medici,

Queen of France and protector of the fuorusciti, Martelli developed a lasting friendship with

Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Lorenzino, murderer of Duke Alessandro.322 For Ugolino’s friends who remained in Florence, these connections were damning. Those who valued their ducal patrons were forced to sever contact: Luca Martini (whose letter is quoted at the very start

Letterato, l’Accademia, il libro: contributi sulla cultura veneta del cinquecento (Padua: Antenore, 1988). Carl Strehlke takes Bronzino’s academic career into consideration in “Bronzino and Pontormo, for and against the Medici.” Cropper was aware of the social complexity of Bronzino’s portraits before many others, and, in 1985 suggested that the Ugolino Martelli was meant as a display of a generalized Florentine patriotism, its fiorentinità. (Cropper, “Prolegomena,” 106). As interest in Bronzino’s academic career has grown, Cropper’s model of political passivity has been used to reconcile seemingly conflicting ideologies in Bronzino’s portraits and personal life. The concept of fiorentinità was investigated at length by Maurice Brock, intrigued by what he saw as Cropper’s proposal that the portraits “might be explained by a preoccupation with fiorentinità” (Brock, Bronzino, 7).

321 For Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, see Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 174. For his relationship with Ugolino Martelli, see Bramanti, Lettere, 11, 18, 20-21, 24, etc.; For Niccolò Ridolfi, see Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti. For a more general treatment of his role in politics, see, for example: Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino; Giorgio Spini, Cosimo I. For his relationship with Ugolino Martelli, see Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 10. Ridolfi is the brother-in-law of Martelli’s mother (see page 125 below).

322 Bramanti, Lettere, 21, 23, 26. In a communication to Piero Vettori, Martelli speaks of frequenting the society of a friend, “or,” he corrects, “more precisely, the brother of a friend”— that is, Giuliano de’ Medici: fellow ally of the Strozzi, and ostracized brother of Lorenzino de’ Medici, murderer of Duke Alessandro (Bramanti, Lettere, 38). For Giuliano de’ Medici, see Stefano Tabacchi, "Giuliano de’ Medici,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 73 (2009). http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuliano-de-medici_res-f9a5fec6-dcde-11df-9ef0- d5ce3506d72e_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

106 of to this dissertation) urged Duke Cosimo to refuse Ugolino’s request for reconciliation, citing

Ugolino’s “tanti difetti,” his service to the Strozzi, and other actions displeasing to the Duke and

God.323 Ugolino’s contemporaries apparently had no doubts as to the subversive nature of his beliefs.

Nevertheless, attempts to parse the painting’s iconography have been distorted by misinformation about Ugolino’s connections and career, and by the untidy history of republican opposition in the early years of the Medici Duchy. A pervasive misreading of the Homeric text, with modern scholars unaware of its Renaissance usage, has further hampered efforts. These complications have made it difficult for today’s viewers to see the statue of David in what must have been its intended mode: as the young biblical hero long symbolic of Florentine liberty, and—despite the painting’s origin during the Medici Duchy—as an apotropaic talisman for and celebration of the defenders of the anti-Medicean republic. By restoring the Ugolino Martelli to its proper context, and untangling the contemporary meaning of its artistic and literary references, the painting becomes legible as a statement of the young man’s republican partisanship, safely couched in terms of the ancient, biblical, and more recent Tuscan past.

323 Martini to Duke Cosimo I (September, 1558) in ASF, Mediceo del Principato 473A, cc. 552r- 553r: “Questo giorno ho avuto di Roma una lettera da messer Ugolino di Luigi Martelli, la quale mando a vostra eccellenza illustrissima con la presente, che essendo egli stato, secondo che io ne ho inteso al servizio delli Strozzi e della seta spiacente a Dio e a’ nemici suoi, non solo non debbo accettare sue lettere, ma non sentirne ragionare se non per nuocerli, anzi, per dir meglio, per gastigarlo in parte de’ tanti suoi difetti ch’a sì gran torto al fine di se stesso ha commessi…”; See Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 12, 39 ; Bramanti, Lettere, 23. For Luca Martini, see Michel Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo Principe: Cultura e politica a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I e di Francesco de’ Medici (Rome: Vecchiarelli, 2004), esp. 31-4. Ugolino’s request for reconciliation follows the final failure of fuorusciti military efforts against the Medici in Siena.

107

I.

Ugolino Martelli was born on September 21st, 1519, to Luigi di Luigi Martelli and

Margherita di Giovanvittorio Soderini, the third of fourteen children.324 Melissa Meriam Bullard has explained that in Renaissance Florence, the family, as the basic social unit, had much to do with determining political posture.325 For this reason, art historians have frequently examined

Ugolino’s family in order to establish his supposed loyalties and thereby interpret his portrait.

These studies have highlighted the ties connecting the Martelli and the Medici.326 This emphasis, while based in fact, greatly oversimplifies the relationship between the two families, and, for that matter, the history of Florentine republicanism.

Like many wealthy families whose preeminence was established during the era of

Cosimo il Vecchio, the Martelli would not necessarily have seen republican patriotism and support for the fifteenth-century Medici as mutually exclusive. Investigation into Ugolino’s family history shows that his heritage would have included both the traditions of fifteenth- century Medicean Florence under Cosimo and Lorenzo and sixteenth-century devotion to the republican cause. For descendants of the fifteenth-century oligarchy, fidelity in the sixteenth century to the new Medici dukes should not be automatically assumed.

The Martelli first arrived in Florence during the mid-fourteenth century, when a sword- maker moved to the city from the Valdisieve, and quickly established himself as one of her

324 Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 11, 8, n. 12. Ugolino was baptized the following Sunday, the 25 of September, at Santa Maria del Fiore.

325 Melissa Meriam Bullard. "Marriage Politics and the Family in Florence: The Strozzi-Medici Alliance of 1508," The American Historical Review 84, no. 3 (June 1979):668-87, 668.

326 Cropper’s description of Ugolino as a young man “whose family was closely tied to the Medici” is characteristic ("L'arte cortigiana,” 103).

108 richest citizens.327 He set a precedent for the family’s participation in the Florentine government, and his offspring became part of the ruling oligarchy of Florence.328

During the fifteenth century, the family was headed by nine brothers: a wealthy, impressive, and politically involved generation entirely devoted first to Cosimo il Vecchio, and later to Lorenzo il Magnifico.329 A strong tradition of art patronage began early in this period; one of these brothers, Roberto di Niccolò, is remembered for his cultivation of Donatello.330

327 Demostene Tiribilli-Giuliani, “Ugolino Martelli,” in Summario storico delle famiglie celebri Toscane..., vol. 2 (Florence: Ulisse Diligenti, 1868), 49.

328 He sat on the Signoria seven times between 1343 and 1373. The family produced thirty priori and nine gonfaloniere di Giustizia. See Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri d’Italia: Martelli di Firenze (Milan: Giusti, 1819); Gene A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1387 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 41n.; Roberto Palmarocchi, "Famiglia Martelli," Enciclopedia Italiana Online, 1934. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/martelli_(Enciclopedia- Italiana)/

329 Litta, Martelli di Firenze; Palmarocchi, "Famiglia Martelli." Ugolino di Niccolò was our Ugolino Martelli’s great-grandfather. His records are found in his Ricordanze dal 1433 al 1483 di Ugolino di Niccolò Martelli, edited by Fulvio Pezzarossa (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1989). Roberto di Niccolò is important as a patron of Donatello. He, like his brothers, was active in politics, and in 1439 was named Count Palatine by the visiting Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologos. He appears to have been an intimate of Cosimo to the degree of advising in matters of banking, politics, and artistic patronage. See Roger Crum, “Roberto Martelli, the Council of Florence, and the Medici Palace Chapel,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 59, no. 3 (1996): 403-17. Another brother, Domenico di Niccolò was frequently employed by Cosimo de’ Medici as ambassador, and served as a gonfaloniere di Giustizia before dying in 1476 (Tiribilli-Giuliani, “Ugolino Martelli,” 50). See also Simona Feci, “Braccio Martelli” in DBI v.71 (2008). http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/braccio-martelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

330 In his Vita of Donatello, Vasari sketches a close relationship between Roberto and the sculptor: “Fu allevato Donatello dalla fanciullezza in casa di Ruberto Martelli; e per le buone qualità e per lo studio della virtù sua non solo meritò d’essere amato da lui, ma ancora da tutta quella nobile famiglia.” Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 408. See also Alessandra Civai, “Donatello e Roberto Martelli: nuove acquisizioni documentarie,” in Donatello-Studien, ed. Monika Cämmerer (Munich: Bruckmann, 1989): 252-262; and idem, Dipinte e sculture nella casa Martelli. Storia di una collezione patrizia Fiorentina dal Quattrocento all’Ottocento (Florence: Opus Libri, 1990). The Palazzo was perhaps based on a design by Donatello, and contains a Martelli coat-of-arms (c.1440).

109

Towards the end of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth, the relationship between the Martelli and the Medici becomes harder to categorize. In one example, Roberto’s nephew

Braccio seems to have enjoyed an affectionate friendship with Lorenzo il Magnifico, with whom he was close in age.331 Lorenzo died in 1492, and the unpopular Piero de’ Medici took his place as leader of the family. Two years later, when Piero was expelled from Florence, Braccio quickly abandoned his former allies and declared his loyalty to the republic. Having renounced his Medicean connections, Braccio served the republic as an ambassador and on the council of the Dieci di Libertà.332

After the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Martelli were perhaps more notable in their devotion to the republic than to the Medici. A cousin of Ugolino’s father was one of the three commissioners for the city’s defense during the last republic.333 This commissioner and his brother had sons—cousins—both named Ludovico, both well-known poets, both who died notorious deaths in events related to the Siege.334 Although Ugolino was himself too young to

331 Braccio and Lorenzo exchanged an abundance of letters—a correspondence that bespeaks a fairly intimate friendship. As a member of Lorenzo’s circle (or brigata), Braccio joined the Compagnia dei Magi, a confraternity associated with the Medici family. He was given a humanist education and was on close terms with Marsilio Ficino. Later, in 1486, he was elected as an official of the Studio Fiorentino, a position he kept for eight years (Feci, “Braccio Martelli”).

332 Feci, “Braccio Martelli.”

333 Litta, Martelli di Firenze.

334 For Ludovico di Giovanfrancesco Martelli, see Cropper, “Prolegomena,” 155-7, and Tiribilli- Giuliani, “Ugolino Martelli,” 51. Ludovico di Lorenzo Martelli was an advocate of the expulsion of the Medici in 1527. In his fervor he killed a soldier posted outside the family palazzo, and fled to Salerno, where he soon, perhaps of poisoning. As a lyric poet, Ludovico is remembered for his tragedy entitled Tullia; his verses were published posthumously in Rome in 1533 (Palmarocchi, “Famiglia Martelli”). Benedetto Varchi (Ugolino’s tutor) and Ludovico knew each other in their youth, providing another connection (see Guido Manacorda, Benedetto Varchi: l’uomo, il poeta, il critico [Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1903], 54).

110 fight, these men were the closest relatives of his generation, which included several other stalwart republicans.335

Ugolino’s maternal connections are rarely mentioned in discussions of his portrait, but through his mother, Margherita Soderini, he was bound to some of the most important republicans of the early sixteenth century.336 The Soderini, like the Martelli, were among the most prominent Medicean families dating from the time of Cosimo il Vecchio.337 And, also like the Martelli, their allegiances changed dramatically after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico: by the early sixteenth century, the Soderini name was intrinsically linked to the republican

335 Ugolino’s other republican relatives on the Martelli side include Vincenzo and Braccio di Alessandro Martelli (Palmarocchi, “Famiglia Martelli”). Vincenzo was imprisoned for writing anti-Medicean sonnets at Naples during the meetings between the fuorusciti and the Emperor (Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo Repubblicano, 242). For Cropper, the demise of Ludovico di Giovanfrancesco Martelli may supply the rationale for the inclusion of the Homeric text in Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (“Prolegomena,” 156). Ludovico famously challenged Giovanni Bandini (he serving the invading papal and imperial forces) over his belittlement of the Florentine army, labeling him a “traitor to country and Christ” (Tiribilli-Giuliani, “Ugolino Martelli,” 51). On Bandini see Roberto Cantagalli, “Alessandro Giovanni Bandini” in DBI, vol. 5 (1963) http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alessandro-giovanni-bandini. The allusion to Christ is significant in that the Florentines had “elected” Christ as figural head of state of the republic (Hale, Florence and the Medici, 117). The duel was fought with great pomp and circumstance—complete with seconds—and took place in front of the watching armies. Ludovico was injured in the fight and would later die of his wounds. The story was kept alive in the public imagination, and is retold in Agostino Ademollo, Marietta de’ Ricci, ovvero, Firenze al Tempo dell’Assedio: Racconto storico di Agostino Ademollo, ed. Luigi Passerini, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Florence: Stabilimento Chiari, 1845), 93. Varchi and Busini both report that Martelli’s declared desire to retaliate against Bandini for the sake of his fellow Florentines was a mask for his real reason, the woman. Cropper argues that Ludovico’s tale is parallel to that which appears in the Iliad: similarly couched in terms of battle, yet in reality caused by a woman (Cropper, “Prolegomena,” 155). This reading does not fully account for the specificity of reference in Bronzino’s painting to Book IX of the Iliad, nor the careful reproduction of a particular passage.

336 Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri d’Italia: Soderini di Firenze, vol. 13 (Milan: Giusti, 1819), tavola VII.

337 Nicolai Rubinstein, Politics, Diplomacy and the Constitution in Florence and Italy, vol. 2 of Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Giovanni Ciappelli (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011), 293.

111 faction.338 When Luigi Martelli and Margherita Soderini were married in June of 1512, her uncle Piero, the city’s Standard Bearer for Life, had been leader of the republic for a decade.339

In September of 1512, only a few months after the wedding, Medici control was reestablished and Piero Soderini’s government dismantled.340 The entire family suffered banishment and the confiscation of their goods.341 Ugolino’s grandfather Giovanvittorio

Soderini (brother to Piero) was a famous jurist and had been a prominent government official, often acting as the republic’s ambassador.342 With the return of the Medici, Giovanvittorio was

338 Lo Re describes them as “…una famiglie di tradizione repubblicana” (Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana, 268). As should be increasingly clear, the two terms are not mutually exclusive until after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Many aristocratic Florentines who chose not to support the Medici Dukes could still believe themselves to be both ‘republican’ and ‘Medicean’ in the fifteenth-century sense.

339 Regarding the marriage, Luigi writes: “Ricordo come io Luigi di Luigi Martelli tolsi per donna la Margherita figliuola di messer Giovanvetorio di messer Tomaso Soderini a dì 6 di giugno l’anno 1512 e tenila giurata mesi sedici in circa e la menai a dì 25 di setembre 1513 in casa di detto messer Giovanvetorio a Empoli.” ASF, CS, V, 1473, c.160r. Reprinted in Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 7n. Piero Soderini (1452-1522) was appointed the Republic’s Gonfaloniere a Vita in 1502, a position inspired, to some degree, by the Venetian Republic’s Doge. For Soderini, see H.C. Butters, “Piero Soderini and the Golden Age,” Italian Studies 33 (1978), 58. (Butters cites the analysis of the Doge’s position in C. Diehl, Une République Patricienne, Venise [Paris: E. Flammarion, 1915], 107.) The influence of the Venetian Republic on Florentine constitutional government is evident.

340 With the aid of Spanish troops, cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici (younger brother of Piero) retook the city and its seat of government, the Palazzo Vecchio. See Dennis Hay and John Law, Italy in the age of the Renaissance 1380-1530 (London: Longman Group, 1989), 260.

341 Von Albertini, Firenze dalla Repubblica, 21-22.

342 Giovanvittorio appears throughout the Consulte e Practiche of the republic, 1494-1512. He was also sent as an ambassador to Emperor Maximilian (Rubinstein, Politics, Diplomacy and the Constitution, 183, 187-191). Another brother to Giovanvittorio and Piero was Francesco Soderini, Bishop of Saintes, who Stephens notes was the “enemy and rival of the cardinals Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici. In April 1494 he had, together with Lorenzo and Giovanni de’ Medici, been involved in a plot against Piero de’ Medici.” Stephens emphasizes the purchase, by Francesco and another family member (Luigi di Pagolo Soderini) of forfeited Medici property, noting that “many (perhaps all)” of the men mentioned were perhaps hostile to the Medici before 112 sent into exile with his brother, and allowed to return the following year. This process was repeated in 1522-3, when Giovanvittorio was again banished when the Soderini were involved in a plot to overthrow the Medici.343 Ugolino’s grandfather lived quietly in Florence from 1523-27, at which point, with the establishment of the last Florentine republic, he was twice among the contenders for the appointment of Gonfaloniere di Giustizia.344 When Niccolò Capponi was selected instead, Giovanvittorio was appointed one of the Dieci di Libertà e Pace. In 1528, only illness prevented Giovanvittorio, Ugolino’s grandfather, from becoming the republic’s

Gonfaloniere. He died in August of that year.345 Ugolino was then nine years old.

II.

In the years following the defeat of the republic in 1530, and before his departure from

Florence in 1537, the records of Ugolino’s experience are primarily concerned with his education.

In the early 1530s he lived mainly in Florence, tutored by Benedetto Varchi.346 Bronzino was a

1494, but “few things can give such permanence to hatred as occupancy of one’s enemy’s estate.” Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 27-28.

343 For the plot of 1522, see Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 120-121. Stephens’ analysis of the participants aligns with the arguments to be set forth in this chapter regarding the ideology of the younger generation of Florentine letterati, who saw their intellectual pursuits as political acts: “Plots like this one were the work of playboys, of the rich, and (by Florentine standards) of the young (giovani). They were young enough not to desire work and not to need it. That seems to have been true of most members of most conspiracies, but the members of the plots of 1513 and 1522 had intellectual and literary pretensions as well. On both occasions when the plotters drew up lists of possible associates, Machiavelli was named and consequently became implicated. It is a nice irony, for the presence of these “intellectuals” shows that freedom was still the right intellectual cause...”

344 Litta, Soderini di Firenze, tavola VII.

345 ibid.

346 Since Varchi is alluded to in Bronzino’s Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, another of his pupils, it seems entirely reasonable that he would have introduced the painter to Ugolino Martelli. For Varchi’s relationship with Bronzino, see Cecchi, “Ritratti di Poeti” and idem., “Famose Frondi.”

113 friend of Varchi, it is likely through him that Ugolino and the painter were introduced; Varchi also provided Ugolino’s introduction to some of the most celebrated poets and scholars of the period, with whom Ugolino eagerly exchanged letters.347 These years mark the beginning of a relationship that would tie Varchi and Ugolino closely together for nearly two decades, until

Ugolino’s subversive political views became irreconcilable with Varchi’s government appointments.348

In his portrait, Ugolino appears surrounded by books. This literary component reflects a scholarly enthusiasm traceable to the oldest extant material in his hand: a series of rhymed

Ovidian verses, today at the State Archive in Florence. This document demonstrates Ugolino’s nascent interest in poetry, particularly ancient languages and their translation into the vernacular, a literary engagement prominently displayed in his portrait. A neatly lettered heading proudly introduces the work as “the tale of Daphne transformed into a laurel, as elegantly described by

Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses, by me, Ugolino Martelli. Translated in octava rima, as concisely as possible. Begun on the eighth of June, 1534, my age now being 14 or 15 years old, I think.”349 He was, in fact, fifteen.350

347 Benedetto Varchi began visiting the Martelli household sometime around 1530, and biographers of the two men date Varchi’s employment as Ugolino’s tutor to this approximate date. Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 10; Lo Re, “Benedetto Varchi. Contributi per una biografia” (PhD diss., l’Universita degli Studi di Catania, 1995-96), 74.

348 For the rupture with former Florentine friends, see Bramanti, Lettere, 18-20. On 3 April 1548, Nardi writes to Varchi: “…Duolmi bene assai che tra voi e messer Ugolino non duri ancora la medesima benevolenza: vanno così le cose del mondo e le volontà umane (come dicono i notai) sono ambulatorie” (Bramanti, Lettere, 19).

349 ASF, Carte Strozziane, V Serie, 1474, 50r. “Favola di Dafne mutata in alloro elegantemente descritta da ovidio nel primo de mettimor da me Ugolino Martelli. Tradotta in octava rima più brevemente che potette cominciata adì 8 di giugno 1534 et allhora pensavo haver 14 o 15 anni.”

350 For his date of birth, see Bramanti, “Ritratto,” 11. Ugolino was baptized the following Sunday, the 25 of September, at Santa Maria del Fiore.

114

When Bronzino painted the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, only three years had passed since the young man’s translation of the Daphne, but Ugolino, a precocious student, had already earned the respect of some of the period’s most acclaimed Italian humanists. In June of 1537,

Piero Vettori wrote to Ugolino’s tutor, Benedetto Varchi, describing Ugolino as a young man for whom he held the greatest expectations.351 On September twelfth, Pietro Aretino concurred in similarly auspicious lines, seeing in Ugolino “a youth of tremendous promise.”352 In the decade following the creation of Bronzino’s portrait, Martelli would do justice to the high hopes expressed by Aretino and Vettori. Still a young man, he found great success within the academic spheres of the Veneto and Florence, appointed to positions of importance first at the Paduan

Accademia degli Infiammati, and later, in the mid-1540s, at the Accademia Fiorentina.353

In his portrait, Ugolino displays the scholarly credentials upon which such distinctions would depend. The trio of texts, easily identified as works by Homer, Virgil, and Pietro Bembo, together represent the tre lingue più belle (ancient Greek, Latin, and vernacular Italian); Ugolino was especially renowned for the mastery of these languages.354 Yet Bronzino’s painting offers

351 “[S]pero di lui ogni buon successo.” Piero Vettori to Benedetto Varchi, 30 June 1537. Reprinted in Prose Fiorentine dello Smarrito Accademico della Crusca, G. G. Bottari, R. A. Martini, and T. Buonaventura, eds., vol. 4 (Florence: Stamperia di S. A. R, 1716), 2.

352 “[U]n giovine di gloriosa aspettazione.” Pietro Aretino to Benedetto Varchi, 12 September 1537. Reprinted in Alessandro Cecchi, "Ritratti di Poeti,” 20.

353 For Martelli’s academic career, see the biographies listed above (note 3), as well as Cecchi, “Ritratti di Poeti.” See also Richard S. Samuels, "Benedetto Varchi, the Accademia degli Infiammati, and the Origins of the Italian Academic Movement," Renaissance Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1976): 599-634 (esp. 624); Umberto Pirotti, “Benedetto Varchi e la questione della lingua,” Convivium 28 (1960): 524-52; F. Piovan, "Sul soggiorno padovano di Benedetto Varchi. Documenti inediti," Quaderni per la storia dell' Università di Padova 18 (1985): 171-181; E. Sanesi, Dell' Accademia Fiorentina nel '500 (Estr. Atti della Soc. Colombaria) (Florence: Stab. Tip. già Chiari succ. C. Mori, 1936).

354 Carlo Strozzi in a letter to Martelli, written from Venice upon the latter’s return to Florence: “…beato voi, il quale in quegli anni, che gli altri sogliono appena incominciare… vi trovate 115 more than simple testimony to a schoolboy’s proficiency, or frank representation of a scholar surrounded by his favorite texts. Stephen Campbell, for example, has identified the allusion to

Bembo as a contrived indication of Ugolino’s refinement and ideal personal qualities, the book serving as evidence of a profound, melancholic interiority prized by the period elite.355 But even this observation, though apt, takes a limited view of the picture’s scope.

The subject of Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli is not confined by the bounds of the sitter’s inner nature; the portrait is equally concerned with the character of Ugolino’s native city. And although painted in a moment of tremendous civil unrest, the Florentine world invoked by the portrait is precisely, resolutely, even dangerously his own.

To Benedetto Varchi, for whom Martelli’s youthful Ovidian verses were most likely composed, the relevance of ancient text to contemporary life was of the utmost importance.356

Varchi was a humanist scholar who saw himself as a kind of sixteenth-century , stressing the modern relevance and applicability of classical writers.357 He urged his followers to

…ricco dell’intelligenza delle tre lingue più belle.” Strozzi to Martelli, Venice, 1542, in Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini, et eccellentissimi ingegni: scritte in diverse materie, ed. Paolo Manuzio, vol. 1 (Venice: Aldi filii, 1551), 42. Varchi to Ludovico Dolce, 1539: “quel Martello, che è un giovanetto nobile, et molto letterato, Greco, Latino di suo tempo, et di nuovo si è dato al Toscano.” Reprinted in Cecchi, "Ritratti di Poeti,” 22. Martelli also read French and Hebrew (Romoli, Notizie, 23). For the questione della lingua and Martelli’s circle, see Pirotti, “Varchi e la questione della lingua.”

355 Stephen J. Campbell, “Pietro Bembo e il ritratto del Rinascimento,” in Guido Beltramini, Davide Gasparotto, Adolfo Tura eds., Pietro Bembo e l’invenzione del Rinascimento (Venice: Marsilio, 2013).

356 Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 11.

357 Samuels, "Origins of the Italian Academic Movement," 623.

116 see Homer “like a mirror, in which are reflected all of the paths by which one may escape vice, and achieve virtue.”358

In Bronzino’s portrait, Ugolino gestures to the volume of Homer set before him—the text oriented towards the viewer—commanding us to read [fig. 3.3]. The title and first fourteen lines of Book Nine of the Iliad lie open on the table. Agamemnon and his troops are camped outside the walls of Troy. Facing failure, Agamemnon summons his men, intending to concede defeat:

Meanwhile, as the Trojans maintained their careful watch, Panic, chilling Fear’s dread comrade, gripped Achaeans, their best men suffering unendurable anguish. Just like those times two winds blow in from Thrace— North Wind and West Wind suddenly spring up and lash the fish-filled seas—black waves at once rise up, then fling seaweed in piles along the shoreline— so spirits in Achaean chests were now cast down. Atreus’ son, heart overwhelmed with painful sorrow, went to give out orders for clear-voiced heralds to summon all the warriors to assembly, calling them one by one, not with a general shout. He himself, with his heralds, carried out the task. The counsellors sat heart sick. Agamemnon stood…359

Bronzino takes pains to secure our attention to the most significant words on the page, drawing our eyes to the final phrase—“histato”—in which Agamemnon rises to speak.360 What follows would be the king’s proposal to his weary soldiers that they abandon the siege of Troy

358 Varchi, Opere, vol. 2 (Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1859), 704. Varchi attributes the idea to St. Basil: “S. Basilio proponeva ai suoi discepoli la poesia d’Omero, come uno specchio, nel quale rilucessero tutte le vie così da fuggire I vixxi, come da conseguire le virtue.” (From a speech given at the Accademia Fiorentina on the second Sunday of December, 1553). Varchi reiterates the idea: “E Omero nel cui poema tutti gli esempi ammaestramenti si trovano, i quali possano o accendere gli animi alle virtù, o rimuoverli da vizii…” (728).

359 Homer, The Iliad, translated by Ian Johnston (Arlington Va.: Richer Resources Publications, 2006), 178.

360 Wildmoser, "Bildnis des Ugolino Martelli,” 129; Brock, “Homère florentin,” 329.

117 and return defeated home. The suggestion prompts disobedience from the men, as they proclaim their determination to remain and fight, resolving to stay until the battle is won.361

Though the lines reproduced do in fact describe resignation and lament, they would have been understood by Bronzino’s contemporaries to inspire the opposite. In an argument leveled against Varchi, his contemporary, the poet Ludovico Castelvetro cites this same incident from

Homer to characterize a rhetorical device: Castelvetro writes that it is hard to tell whether

Varchi is in earnest, or “is following the artifice which served Homer in the speech of

Agamemnon, in which he urges the Greeks to leave the siege of Troy…[and] in defending the opinion...provides all the reasons that prove the contrary.”362

Interpreters of Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli have relied upon a literal reading of the

Homeric text, unaware of its renaissance usage. Brock, for example, has recently written that the significance of the citation is that “the Greek king no longer believes in victory.”363 Having thus accepted the apparent pessimism of the passage, these interpreters must reconcile Bronzino’s juxtaposition of two apparently contradictory militaristic references—the statue and the text.

Some have rationalized the pairing by concluding that the figure of David is simply devoid of

361 Homer, Iliad, 178.

362 Ludovico Castelvetro, “Correzione d’ alcune cose nel Dialogo delle Lingue di Benedetto Varchi, per Ludovico Castelvetro,” in Varchi, Opere, vol. 2: 204-241, 221-222: “Ora, riguardando io le ragioni colle quali il Varco si dà a provare la prima riprensione, la quale è, che la mia risposta sia lodata da molti per altro, che perchè il vaglia, e per la verità, ho dubitato, e no senza cagione, se egli abbia voluto stabilire questo, o pure il contrario, seguendo in ciò l’artificio servato da Omero nella diceria d’Agamennone, nella quale conforta i Greci a lasciare l’assedio di Troia, e a tornarsene a casa, perciocchè mostrando di portare opinione che, per lui, e per l’esercito sia meglio l’andarsene, che lo stare, adduce tutte le ragioni, che pruovano il contrario, cioè che meglio è per lui, e per l’esercito lo stare, che l’andare. Conciossiacosachè le dimostrazioni fatte del Varco prontino in contraria parte a quella che mostra di voler tenere, e facciano per poco manifesta fede, che la risposta mia sia lodata da molti perchè ella meriti d’esser lodata, e per la nuda sola verità, che l’accompagna, e non per altro.”

363 Brock, “Homère florentin,” 331.

118 any ideological significance. Brock treats the biblical hero as a purely decorative element:

“furnish[ing] nothing more or less than a formal trace of fiorentinità, […] attached to the architectural scheme of the cortile.” For Elizabeth Cropper, the portrait presents a melancholic acknowledgment of the end of the republican era, the Iliad providing an “enigmatic counterpoint to the image of victorious David, emblematic of the defense of Florentine liberty.”364

Yet as Castelvetro explains, renaissance Florentines understood this scene from the ninth book of the Iliad in a completely different manner, as an example of literary apophasis. When

Agamemnon rises to speak, he feigns belief that retreat is the best course for the struggling army, and in this charade achieves his true goal of inspiring the troops with the courage to stay and fight. Within Bronzino’s painting, the Homeric passage is not an expression of surrender, but rather a call to arms. That message perfectly complements the religious and political meaning of the victorious David, a celebration of the weak whose faith allows them to challenge the strong.

It is also entirely in keeping with the circumstances of the Florentine autumn of 1537.

III.

In the mid-1530s, Florence was experiencing the worst instability since the republic’s surrender.365 The aftermath of the Siege had reduced the city’s population by at least a third; those who were left turned against each other in factions divided by class and political

364 Cropper, “Prolegomena,” 156; accepted by Wildmoser, "Bildnis des Ugolino Martelli,” 195, and n.

365 Spini summarizes the dire situation as follows: “Per di più Firenze degli anni trenta del Cinquecento era una città convalescente da una ferita terribile: l’Assedio del 1530, con le stragi che la guerra, la peste e la fame avevano consumato durante il suo corso; con le devastazioni, il dissanguamento finanziario, l’interruzione dei traffici e delle manifatture che lo avevano accompagnato; con la depressione economica che lo aveva seguito. Come se non bastasse, la sua convalescenza era resa più travagliata da quella frattura, di cui già si è detto, fra la maggioranza dei cittadini e il potere mediceo, tornato in patria “dans les fourgons de l’étranger” (Spini, Cosimo I, 5).

119 loyalties.366 Following Duke Alessandro’s elevation in 1532, Florence became, in Varchi’s characterization, a place filled with “melancholy and discontent,” its people “all incredibly sad and filled with regret.”367

Ducal authority was derived from foreign powers, and anything but stable. When the

Medici Pope Clement VII died in 1534, Bernardo Segni reported that gleeful Florentines, hearing the news, “celebrated in their secret hearts” the death of one of the “principal authors of their city’s most bitter tyranny.”368 The new Pope Paul III Farnese welcomed the Florentine exiles and gave them hope for papal support in their campaigns against Alessandro.369 The following year, in 1535-6, negotiations in Naples between disgruntled fuorusciti leaders and the Habsburg

Emperor were a failure.370 Florence was on the verge of economic collapse, the threat of violence was growing, and, in January of 1537, Duke Alessandro was murdered by his cousin.371

366 Hale describes the Siege as comparable in destruction only to two events in Florentine history: the great plague of 1348-9 and the Ciompi revolt of 1378 (Florence and the Medici, 120).

367 “Creato il duca Alessandro, nel modo che s’è detto, signore assoluto di Firenze, era in tutto l’universale una tacita mestizia e scontentezza... [stavano] tristi e dolenti tutti.” Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. III, 2.

368 Bernardo Segni, Istorie fiorentine, 261-62: “Morto papa Clemente l’anno MDXXXIV, parve che la maggior parte delli uomini ne sentissero allegrezza grande […]. Li fiorentini sopra tutti ne fecero festa ne’ segreti cuori, non potendo farne in palese, perché sentivano esser privo di vita il principale autore di tutti i loro martirii e soprattutto di una acerbissima tirannide, la quale gli recava ancora a più odio, quanto che in lui essendo state bellissime occasioni in più tempi di costituire con suo grande onore la patria in libertà, avevano veduto mettervi un crudelissimo signore nella persona ancora di un principe bastardo, e che non sapeva in modo alcuno chi fusse il suo padre.”

369 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 44.

370 See, for example, Randolph Starn, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 120; Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 111.

371 On the death of Alessandro, see Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. III,184-196.

120

Republican hopes were rekindled by the event.372 Upon receiving the news of the assassination, eager for the chance to regain their native city, the three fuorusciti cardinals

Ridolfi, Salviati, and Gaddi—leaders of the republican exiles—quickly returned to Florence.

They saw Alessandro’s death as an opportunity to reestablish an oligarchic republic governed by a noble and unencumbered Consiglio Grande, overseen by a just prince: the ideals of an aristocratic republican libertà.373 Two weeks later they left in a huff, their personal safety threatened, and bearing a growing resentment for the new head of state, Cosimo de’ Medici.374

Troops of exiles soon rallied under the leadership (and with the funding) of the trio of wealthy

Cardinals and the exiled banker Filippo Strozzi.375 Their cause seemed to find support in Rome:

Pope Paul II Farnese was described by a Venetian ambassador as “showing himself ready to favor these fuoriusciti Cardinals, and desirous that the republic should be restored.” 376 Francis I of France promised aid to the fuorusciti, and a Turkish fleet floated off the coast.377 Florence was at a fever pitch, with war a very immediate reality.

372 Francesca Russo writes specifically that the homicide “aveva riacceso le speranze di una restaurazione delle libere istituzioni repubblicane” in “L’idea di Res publica e pensiero anti- tirannico in Donato Giannoti negli anni dell’esilio,” Annali della Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, vol. 1 (2009): 179-194, 183.

373 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 216-219.

374 Simoncelli, op. cit., 235-9; Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. III, 230-231; Spini, Cosimo I, 60.

375 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo Repubblicano, 240.

376 “Sua santità del pontefice si mostra molto pronta a favorire questi reverendissimi cardinali fuoriusciti et desiderosa che quella città ritorni republic.” Report of the Venetian ambassador Lorenzo Bragadin, composed on 14 January, 1537, reprinted in Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti, 41.

377 “Qua si sta in gran timore del Turco, maggiormente da poi che s’è inteso che egli manda costì un ambasciatore, quale poi ha da passare in Franci. … I fuorusciti fiorentine che tengono mano col turco a farlo venire in Italia.” Cardinal Salviati to Filippo Strozzi, writing from Rome, 121

This tenuous state of Florentine affairs has recently been outlined by Nicholas Baker in his study of the sixteenth-century shift from “a civic world to a court society,” in which he investigates the cultural changes that constitute the background to Bronzino’s early portraits.

Baker places Ugolino Martelli firmly on the side of the Medici Duchy. He suggests that the passage from the Iliad is intended as refined censure of republican aggressors, “invit[ing] comparison with the damage wrought by the political conflicts of 1527-30 and the continued threat posed to Florentine unity by the exiles.”378 He concludes that “the fact that this is alluded to by the act of reading suggests a distance from the practice of public affairs: they remain consigned now to the realm of literature.”379 But as will become clear, in the 1530s, reading was itself a political act.

In Baker’s interpretation, the Iliad functions as both a critique of the exiles and as an act of self-recusal by Martelli from the conflict. But according to Ugolino Martelli’s biographer

Vanni Bramanti, the youth was himself “a type of fuoruscito,” in other words, hardly one to condemn them in his own portrait.380 Ugolino’s actions provide countless demonstrations of his loyalties. In 1554, he was working for Lorenzo Strozzi, then engaged in leading troops of exiles in battle against the forces of Cosimo I in Siena. In a report to Ruberto Strozzi, Ugolino wrote,

January 5, 1537. ASF, Carte Strozziane, V, 1209, 2 (reprinted in Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 353). Turkish aid for the republican faction is discussed by Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 379-85. Among the most important fuorusciti ambassadors to France was Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, the republican orator quoted often in the first two chapters of this dissertation. His role is mentioned in Cosimo I’s letter to Giovanni Bandini, written in February of 1537 (Giorgio Spini, ed., Cosimo I de’ Medici: Lettere [Florence: Vallecchi, 1940], 20.

378 Nicholas Scott Baker, “From a Civic World to a Court Society: Culture, Class, and Politics in Renaissance Florence, 1480-1550” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2007), 253. (Reprinted in Idem, Fruit of Liberty, 178.)

379 Ibid.

380 Bramanti, Lettere, 21.

122

“we are all well, and filled with desire and hope that things will go well,” and, he adds, “I will not hesitate to undertake those actions which I think will serve our cause.”381 The cause that

Ugolino pledges to serve cannot be construed as anything other than that of the republican fuorusciti.

Maurice Brock has in turn described Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli as performing an expression of political passivity, appropriate “at a time when the entrenchment of the principality made the glorious republican past of the city seem like a distant memory.”382 Brock’s conclusion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the historical moment. In the months surrounding the creation of Bronzino’s painting, the principality was hardly entrenched.383 In fact, for most of 1537, Florence was without a living monarch: Alessandro had been killed on the night of Epiphany (January 6th), and Cosimo was not officially made duke until September

30th, nearly ten months later.384

It was a period in which advocates for the restoration of republican libertà were highly optimistic: on the 15th of July, Donato Giannotti equated Florence to “a ripe pear, ready to drop at any moment, with the slightest encouragement, and [so we] wait with great desire—like the

Jews for the Messiah—for forces to arrive in Tuscany and overthrow the government. […T]his government cannot last.”385 Two weeks later, the republican rebels took action, but

381 “Noi stiamo tutti bene, e con desiderio e speranza che le cose vadino bene”; “Io non manco di fare quegli ufizi che, io penso, servino alla causa” (Ibid., 22); Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 36.

382 Brock, Bronzino, 8.

383 On violence and instability in the period, see Spini, Cosimo I, 63-67.

384 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 307.

385 “Firenze è come una pera matura che sta per cascare et la quale ogni poco di cosa la farebbe cader, et sovi dir che assai di quei nostri di Firenze grandi aspettono con gran desiderio come li Giudei il Messia che si venga in Thoscana con lo esercito acciò che si muti lo Stato, perché essi 123 miscalculated their advantage. During the nighttime hours of July 31st and August 1st, 1537, the exiles were routed at the battle of Montemurlo. The Portrait of Ugolino Martelli is datable to shortly thereafter, in the autumn of 1537, and can be understood in the context of this republican defeat.386

Instead of signaling resignation, the text from the Iliad represents a timely expression of support for the republican cause. Cosimo I de’ Medici, in his own iconography, presented

Montemurlo as the turning point in the consolidation of his reign. His republican enemies, however, did not view the battle as a beginning of their end: in late August of 1537, after less than a month had gone by, Cosimo’s spy in Venice reported that the fuorusciti went about

“saying that everyone in Florence is malcontent […] and the government is in confusion,” these exiles being “of the opinion that you are weak, […] and that by conspiring with your enemies they will easily be able to reenter the city in victory.”387 After the setback at Montemurlo, the

Homeric exhortation to stay until the battle is won—in spite of delays, disappointments, and forlorn prospects—must have held great resonance for republicans like Ugolino.

IV. cittadini stanno ad aspettar uno tale esercito che non par loro che questo Stato possa durar…” Giannotti writing to Piero Salviati, as reported by Duretti, the Medicean spy. ASF Mediceo del principate, “Decyferato,” f. 3039, c. 24r, reprinted in Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 317 and Starn, Donato Giannotti, 47n. Lo Re mistakenly gives the quote to Jacopo Nardi (“Chi potrebbe mai,” 409). On the same day, an imperial spy described Cosimo as being very weak on his own, with powerful enemies outside the city and resented by his own people within the city’s walls. (Spini, Cosimo I, 85).

386 See note 311, page 101 above. Ugolino left Florence in November. Given Cropper’s statement that “portraits were painted relatively quickly in the period” (citing an example by Sebastiano del Piombo which was carried out in 15 days), it seems reasonable to propose that the Ugolino Martelli might have been completed in the three months following the Battle of Montemurlo (Cropper in Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici, 95 no. 2).

387 ASF Mediceo del Principato 3039, Decifrati di un Amico Segreto di Venezia, f31v (25 August, 1537).

124

Ugolino’s personal history and connections weigh heavily against a Medicean interpretation of his portrait. Among Ugolino’s correspondents from the mid-1530s were some of the most prominent leaders of both the Florentine literary community and the militant anti-

Medicean faction—in several instances, these two groups overlapped. Such is the case with

Ugolino’s maternal relations, the brothers Lorenzo di Piero and Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi. The connection was established through Giovanna Soderini, Ugolino’s aunt, who was married to a third brother, Luigi Ridolfi.388 The Ridolfi were grandsons of Lorenzo il Magnifico, directly descended through his daughter, and their mother, Contessina. Lorenzo di Piero and Cardinal

Niccolò Ridolfi identified themselves as republicans in the mold of their grandfather, and despised the foreign imposition of the new Dukes Alessandro and Cosimo, neither of whom could claim hereditary validity.389 Luigi Ridolfi (Ugolino’s uncle by marriage) was, unlike his brothers, a Medici partisan. Segni cites the example of the Ridolfi brothers as proof of the extremely divisive nature of Florentine politics in the mid-1530s, disruptive of family allegiances and longstanding social ties.390

388 Bramanti “Ritratto,” 7 n.9.

389 Lorenzo Ridolfi was declared a rebel in October of 1536 (ASF Carte Strozziane, I, f. 95, 30- 33r). He later married a daughter of Filippo Strozzi and fought on behalf of the exiles at Montemurlo. Cardinal Niccolò was, apart from Filippo Strozzi, perhaps the most influential agent working for reestablishment of the Florentine republic. For their actions and political views, see the accounts in Costa, Michelangelo alle corti, Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, von Albertini, Firenze dalla Repubblica. See also see Lucinda Byatt’s dissertation, “‘Una suprema magnificenza,’ Niccolò Ridolfi. A Florentine Cardinal in Sixteenth- Century Rome” (PhD. Diss., European University Florence, 1983).

390 Segni, Istorie fiorentine, 292-3, describes the scene at Naples (December 1535- February 1536) where the fuorusciti presented their case against the agents of the Duke: “era uno spettacolo raro, a vedere per Napoli il duca e li fiorentini, perché nelle parti contrarie li stessi fratelli e parenti e congiunti, pertinacemente difendevano causa diversa; perché dalla parte contro il duca stave Giovanni Salviati cardinal e Bernardo suo fratello priore di Roma, e da quella del duca stava Alamanno lor fratello che col duca stava allogiato. In simil modo stava il cardinal Ridolfi e Lorenzo suo fratello contro il duca, e all’incontro Luigi lor fratello. […] Onde questi 125

Affectionate letters from 1536-37 document Ugolino’s relationship with Lorenzo and

Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi during their advocacy for the reestablishment of the republic and demonstrate their interest in their young relation’s education and advancement.391 In the early months of 1537, Ugolino sent the Cardinal a commentary on Petrarch, and lamented being forced by his father to cancel a visit. In response, Ridolfi congratulated the young man on his excellent study of the arts, and remarked upon their fondness for one another.392 In 1548, Ugolino abandoned Florence to enter the Cardinal’s service, eventually becoming the executor of his library, the most impressive of the age.393 When Cardinal Ridolfi died under mysterious circumstances in 1550, Duke Cosimo tried to acquire his books, but they were sold instead to

Cosimo’s enemy, Piero Strozzi, whose service Ugolino entered on the occasion of Ridolfi’s tali stretti parenti, grandi amici e familiari per l’addietro, riscontrandosi a cavallo per Napoli non si salutavano.”

391 Starn, Donato Giannotti, 45, 159-162.

392 Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi (in the hand of his secretary, Donato Giannotti) to Ugolino Martelli, mid-January or February 1537. “Quod ita sis affectus erga me quemadmodum tuis litteris ostendis, non miror, qui meae erga te benevolentia mihi conscious sim. Quod vero, iussus a patre tuo, consilium huc proficiscendi, quod coeperas, uti me viseres, abieceris, non equidem repraehendo. [....] Neque nos, qui multis, quibus nollo arctiore societatis vinculo coniuncti summus, adiumento esse solemus, tibi, quem mihi patriae, charitas, atque affinitas, tuumque inprimis excellens optimarum artium studium vel arctissime coniunxerunt, ullo pacto deeriumus. Vale.” Reprinted in Starn, Donato Giannotti, 162. See also Ugolino’s letter to Lorenzo Ridolfi discussing the subject of the Petrarchan commentary, and the young man’s affection for the Ridolfi brothers (ibid., 161). Note that Starn is mistaken in concluding that the Ridolfi and Ugolino are political rivals.

393 Ugolino wrote to Pietro Vettori: “Avendo io tutta la libreria del cardinal ridolfi a mia requisitione,” (Bramanti, “Ritratto,” 38n). On Ugolino’s as executor, see Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti, 32; For more on Ridolfi’s library and the blending of his humanist/political pursuits, see: Maude Vanhaelen, “‘Cose di Platone fatte Toscane’: Language and Ideology in Two Vernacular Translations of Plato Printed by Francesco Priscianese”, in The Modern Language Review 107, No. 4 (October 2012), pp. 1082-1100. See also Roberto Ridolfi, “La biblioteca del cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi (1501-1550),” La bibliofilía 31 (1929): 173-93, and David Muratore, La biblioteca del cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi: testo Greco e latino, 2 vols. (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2009).

126 death.394 At that time, Strozzi was the militant leader of the republican forces, and head of the most prominent anti-Medicean family. Eight years later, when Strozzi was killed in battle, the library entered the collection of another of Ugolino’s patrons: Caterina de’ Medici, protector of the fuorusciti, and Queen of France.395

Giorgio Costa’s 2009 study, Michelangelo alle corti di Niccolò Ridolfi e Cosimo I, investigates the crucial role played Cardinal Ridolfi in creating a court atmosphere for Florentine exiles in Rome, one specifically modeled after the court of his grandfather, Lorenzo il

Magnifico.396 In Rome, the Cardinal established a Florentine government in exile devoted equally to political action and cultural production.397 According to Simoncelli, after the fall of the last republic, Florentine intellectuals left their native city not only for lack of patrons, but also because of the particular strength, during the period, of the “relationship between the literary life and political responsibility.” 398

A scholarly community of liberty-minded exiles flourished in Rome at a time when similar interaction would have been dangerous or impossible at home. In Florence, a 1537 decree prevented its citizens from gathering without authorization, but Ridolfi’s Roman court offered republicans an intellectual environment unhindered by the restrictions of the new Medici

394 Ridolfi’s suspicious death by took place during the papal conclave of 1550, and inspired rumors of poisoning by a Medici agent. Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti, 52-54. Costa adds that “con la tragica fine del cardinale Ridolfi, si concluse il tentativo di mantenere in vita un centro alternative a quello del Duca, che potesse in qualche modo condizionare il corso della vita politica fiorentina” (52).

395 Gerard Boter, The Textual Tradition of Plato’s Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 47. Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti, 54.

396 Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti, 30.

397 Ibid., 33.

398 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 165.

127 state.399 Simoncelli has shown that during the 1530s, “literature became, more than ever, a badge of ideological recognition.” This attitude may help explain why a republican condottiere like Piero Strozzi chose to purchase the Cardinal’s extensive library.400

In the 1530s, literary consciousness provided a valid, even glorified channel for the exploration of political sentiment. In examining the Ugolino Martelli, however, certain scholars have interpreted the portrait’s emphasis on literary elements as an act of distancing from

Florentine current events. For example, the inclusion of the Homeric volume, in Cropper’s view, represents a deliberate choice by Ugolino to separate or detach himself from contemporary life.

She writes: “in the case of the Martelli portrait, war—and ancient war at that—is something to read about rather than to fight.”401 In this approach, the text functions as a kind of barrier, holding war and violence at arm’s length—a prop meant to bring into relief the peace to be found within Ugolino’s Florentine setting. This interpretation opposes the teachings of Benedetto

Varchi, who encouraged Ugolino to take Homer as a literal model filled with “esempi ammaestramenti” for navigating contemporary life.402 It also conflicts with the model established by Bronzino’s Allegorical Portrait of Dante, a painting closely related to the Ugolino

Martelli [fig. 3.4].

399 On the decree, see Domenico Zanrè, Cultural Non-Conformity in Early Modern Florence (London: Ashgate, 2004), 16. The ban on public gatherings was part of larger legislation designed to help the Medici establish control over the opposition: simultaneously restricting Florentines from carrying weapons, demanding the placement of lights outside of homes, and offering rewards in exchange for information leading to the capture of rebels. These ordinances were passed on the 23rd of March 1537 and renewed on the 28th of May, 1539. See Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana, 82.

400 Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 165.

401 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 106.

402 Varchi, Opere, 2: 728.

128

Following Bronzino’s return to Florence in 1532, he painted the Dante for Bartolomeo

Bettini, an outspoken republican who fled for Rome shortly after the painting’s completion.403 In the portrait, political content is presented in literary terms. Like Ugolino, Bronzino’s Dante adopts a pose derived from Michelangelo’s Giuliano de’ Medici, and holds open a book whose pages bear legible text. Whereas the Ugolino Martelli uses architectural elements to establish the Florentine setting, in the Dante, Bronzino includes a small Florentine cityscape, nestled under the protective gesture of the poet’s outstretched hand.404

Writing in 1992, Jonathan Nelson proposed that the Allegorical Portrait of Dante should be understood as a partisan picture, demonstrative of republican sentiment.405 Nelson drew attention to the fact that, whereas all previous instances of legible text in portraits of Dante replicate the opening stanzas of the Paradiso, Bronzino’s version for Bettini includes the opening lines from Canto XXV, in which Dante laments his expulsion from Florence. The poet turns a critical eye upon his distant city, chiding those “wolves” who cast him out.406

403 Richard Aste, “Bartolomeo Bettini e la decorazione della sua ‘camera’ fiorentina / Bartolomeo Bettini and his Florentine “Chamber Decoration,” in Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz Nelson, eds., Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova belleza ideale / Venus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty (exh. cat., Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, 2002): 3-25. Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 424, 458.

404 Oil on canvas, Florence, private collection, 1532. A studio version on panel is at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. See Raffaele de Giorgi, “Allegorical Portrait of Dante,” in Natali- Falciani, Bronzino: Artist as Poet, 206, 208. (The entries include bibliographies).

405 Jonathan K. Nelson, “Dante Portraits in Sixteenth Century Florence.”

406 Canto XXV: 1-49: “Se mai continga che ‘l poema sacro / al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, / si che m’ha fatto per molti anni macro, / vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra / del bello ovile ov’io dormí agnello, / nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra; / con altra voce omai, con altro vello / ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte / del mio battesmo prenderò ‘l cappello; ...” [If e’er it happen the Poem Sacred, / To which both heaven and earth have set their hand, / So that it many a year hath made me lean, / O’ercome the cruelty that bars me out / From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered, / An enemy to the wolves that war upon it, / With other voice 129

Bronzino’s Dante is perhaps more directly polemical than has been previously noted.407

Among the Florentine exiles cast out by the change in government was the politician and letterato Donato Giannotti (secretary to Cardinal Ridolfi), whose forced removal had an unexpected literary effect, transforming his views on Dante.408 In the years immediately following the republican defeat of 1530, Giannotti composed a partisan treatise concerning his ideal Florentine government, the Della Repubblica Fiorentina (dedicated to the Cardinal).409 In one chapter of the treatise, Giannotti examines Dante’s repeated vilification of the Florentines— condemnation that had previously puzzled the author: “I used to wonder at the poet Dante, who, throughout his works, refers to the Florentine people as ‘wolves.’”410 Though he had once thought it strange that “a man of such great learning and prudence should thus slander the city,”

forthwith, with other fleece / Poet will I return, at my font / Baptismal will I take the laurel crown; …” trans. H. W. Longfellow (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1886) 122.]

407 Given the obvious topical relationship between the content of Dante’s text and the political situation in the early and mid-1530s, Nelson’s proposal that the Allegorical Portrait of Dante should be understood in political terms has been uniformly accepted. See, for example, Cecchi, Agnolo Bronzino (Florence: Scala, 1996), 20; Brock, Bronzino, 164-6. Philippe Costamagna, in reference to the Dante, has written that “after the fall of the city in the autumn if 1530 and the installation of Alessandro de’ Medici… every form of art served as an opportunity to manifest opposition to the despotic reign of the young ruler” (Costamagna, “The Portraits of Bronzino,” 56).

408 In 1530, Giannotti was arrested, tortured and sentenced to six year’s banishment. Alois Riklin, “Division of Power avant la letter: Donato Giannotti (1534),” History of Political though 29, no. 2 (2008): 257-272, 257.

409 Begun after the republican defeat, Riklin dates its completion neatly to 1534, while Russo puts Giannotti’s effort more generously at 1532-1538.

410 “Io mi soleva già grandemente maravigliare che Dante poeta, in molti luoghi della opera sua, chiamasse i Fiorentini lupi.” Giannotti, “Della Repubblica Fiorentina di Messer Donato Giannotti. Libri Quattro” in Opere politiche e letterarie di Donato Giannotti vol. 1 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1850), 129.

130 recent events had changed Giannotti’s mind.411 “But now,” he writes, “I perfectly understand…that they deserve it.”412 In demonstrating the contemporary applicability of Dante’s polemics, Giannotti focuses his argument on the very same passage prominently reproduced in

Bronzino’s Allegorical Portrait of Dante:

...vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra Del bello ovile, ov’io dormi’ agnello Nimico a’ lupi che li fanno guerra. […o’ercome the cruelty that bars me out From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered An enemy to the wolves that war upon it]413

The Della Repubblica and the Allegorical Portrait of Dante are roughly contemporary, and both characterized by a very similar blend of patriotic nostalgia and political censure, presented in literary terms.414 As in Giannotti’s republican treatise, Bronzino’s portrait uses

Dante’s celebrated legacy to construct a bitter comment upon the fate of the Florentine poet in the early years following the Siege. Whether or not Bronzino and Giannotti knew of each other’s use of the passage is as yet unclear—although Giannotti’s della Repubblica was well- known despite being unpublished, and Michelangelo (who provided drawings for the Bettini commission) were friends.415 It is clear, however, that in both the Della Repubblica and the

411 Giannotti, “Della Repubblica Fiorentina,” 129: “Nè me pareva conveniente, uomo di tanta dottrina e prudenza, dovesse in tal maniera la Città vituperare…”

412 Ibid., 130: “…ma poi, […] ho conosciuto chiaramente, che …si possono meritamente chiamare lupi.” And, later (131): “Non errò, adunque, Dante…”

413 Canto 25.4-6 (trans. Longfellow).

414 c. 1532-4. See notes 405 and 407 above.

415 On the relationship, and the partisanship of both men, see Alois Riklin, Giannotti, Michelangelo und der Tyrannenmord (Bern: Wallstein Verlag, 1996). On contemporary reputation of Giannotti’s work, see ibid., 21. The text was unpublished because it would have put Giannotti’s life in (greater) danger, and jeopardized the safety of anyone connected with such an undertaking.

131

Allegorical Portrait of Dante, the text was chosen for its particular ability to express partisan response to recent events. In Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, the legible text functions analogously, acting as means to communicate the patron’s sentiments—but only to an erudite viewer who could understand its significance.

In the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, the use of ancient Greek implies an intended audience of Ugolino’s letterati peers, many of whom, by 1537, had entered the ranks of the fuorusciti.

Ugolino’s tutor, Benedetto Varchi, was among them. In 1535-6 Varchi was likely living in the

Martelli household, but he left Florence shortly thereafter, hired to teach the youngest sons of the republican leader Filippo Strozzi.416 Varchi joined the forces of the anti-Medicean exiles in their armed revolt against the Medici, taking part in several battles over the following year.417 (The

Medici court historian Giovambattista Adriani recorded that “neither in Bologna nor in Padua

[sites of the two most famous and populous universities] was there a Florentine student who did not run to Montemurlo [to fight on behalf of the exiles],” reiterating the connection between learning and active republican political engagement.)418

In the aftermath of Montemurlo, Varchi retreated to Padua.419 There he found a home among a circle of Florentine scholars and students, including Lorenzo Lenzi. In Bronzino’s

Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, datable to the late 1520s or early 1530s, the young man holds open a

416 Pirotti, Benedetto Varchi e la cultura, 13-15 and n.; Bramanti, "Ritratto,” 10; Manacorda, Benedetto Varchi, 37-42.

417 Pirotti, Varchi e la cultura, 13-14.

418 Adriani, Istoria de’ suoi tempi (Venice: Giunti, 1587), 103 (“non che altrove né in Bologna né in Padova rimase scolar fiorentino che a Montemurlo non corresse”). See also Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 326.

419 Manacorda, Benedetto Varchi, 38. For this period of Varchi’s history, see Pirotti, Varchi e la cultura, 15-17.

132 volume in which a poem by Petrarch shares space with a sonnet by Varchi, composed in Lenzi’s honor [fig. 3.5]. The legible text serves as pertinent a role as it does in the Ugolino Martelli, referring to the relationship between the tutor and student, and comparing Varchi to Petrarch.420

A few months after Montemurlo, Ugolino traveled north to join Varchi in Padua, where his studies had a political component.421 Varchi, Ugolino, and their circle formed the Accademia degli Infiammati, a body dedicated to the defense and glorification of the Tuscan language, embracing the teachings of Pietro Bembo.422 Evidence of this scholarly commitment to the

420 Cecchi, “Famose Frondi.” Lenzi is the nephew of another of the three famous republican cardinals, Niccolò Gaddi. See also Raffaele de Giorgi, “Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi,” in Natali- Falciani, Bronzino, 202 (with bibliography), and Cropper, “Reading Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” 247.

421 In a sonnet addressed to Ugolino, Varchi urges Ugolino: “Tutto ardente di doppio alto disiro / Gite al gran Bembo ed al buon Lauro [Lorenzo Lenzi] a volo, / Onde la Brenta ride e piange l’ Arno.” The Brenta is a Paduan river. (Varchi, “Sonnet 86, Opere, 937.) The dating of Ugolino’s move to Padua is found in the letters of Annibal Caro. On November 12th, four months after Montemurlo, Caro wrote to Varchi in Padua, asking for news of Martelli. Writing from Rome, Caro had heard of Varchi’s recent trip to Bologna to meet Martelli and accompany him for the remainder of his journey north. Annibal Caro, Delle lettere familiari del commendatore Annibal Caro, corrette e illustrate… (Padua: G. Comino, 1763), 1: 4: “Dissemi di M. Ugolino, che era venuto costà: e da altri ho inteso che voi siete andato fino a Bologna per incontrarlo. M. Paolo Manuzio m’ha scritto de’ casi vostri, e vorrebbe che voi pigliaste sicurtà di lui: fatelo, ch’è giovine da tenerne conto, e da sperarne gran cose... Di Roma, alli 12 di Novembre, 1537.” ; On the relationship between academic study in Padua and politics during the 1530s and ‘40s, see Claudia di Filippo Bareggi, “In nota alla politica culturale di Cosimo I: L’Accademia fiorentina,” Quaderni storici 7 (1973): 527-74; Michael Sherberg, “The Accademia Fiorentina and the Question of the Language: The Politics of Theory in Ducal Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 56, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 26-55; Armand L. De Gaetano, Giambattista Gelli and the Florentine Academy: The Rebellion against Latin (Florence: Olshki, 1976); Michel Plaisance, “Une première affirmation de la politique culturelle de Come Ier: la transformation de l’Académie des ‘Humidi’ en Académie Florentine (1540-42),” in Les Écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie a l’époque de la Renaissance, ed. Andre Rochon, première série (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1973): 361-438; Plaisance, “Culture et politique a Florence de 1542 à 1551: Lasca et les Humidi aux prises avec l’Académie Florentine,” in Les Écrivains, deuxième série, 149-242.

422 See, for example, Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo Principe, 54-57; A. Daniele, “Sperone Speroni, Bernardino Tomitani e l’Accademia degli Infiammati di Padova,” in Sperone Speroni, 133

Florentine vernacular appears in Ugolino’s portrait, summoned by the juxtaposition of Latin,

Greek and Bembo’s Tuscan.423 Varchi, with the aid of friends like Bronzino and Luca Martini, was pardoned by Cosimo and returned to Florence in 1543 to write his Storia Fiorentina.424

Ugolino returned to Florence for a brief period beginning in 1542, becoming actively involved in the city’s academic life, as he had been in Padua. He was elected Console of the

Accademia Fiorentina in 1544, at the young age of 25.425 The Academy was then enduring a struggle for control that pitted members of the original Infiammati and Humidi (largely made up of republicans and former exiles) against state-backed academics (the “Aramei”), intent upon the modification of the institution into an agent for Medicean cultural production.426 In August of

1547, the Aramei succeeded in purging the Academy of those members whose motives did not match their own—Bronzino among them.427 One former member of the Humidi wrote a satirical lament in the voice of the Humidi itself, mourning its shift from an “Accademia onorata” to one

“condotta in bordello.”428 Early in the following year, Ugolino abandoned Florence to join the

ed. G. Folena, Filogia Veneta, 2 (Padua, 1989): 1-53 (esp. 50-53 for Martelli reading Bembo at the Infiammati).

423 See Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet; Cecchi, “Ritratti di Poeti,” 19.

424 Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo Principe, 133. As Vanni Bramanti notes, none of Varchi’s students from this period in the Veneto ever settled in Florence. His disciples were “too young to be banished or declared rebels at the conclusion of the Siege, [yet] preferred, or perhaps did not have another choice but to continue their existence outside of their homeland, not forgetting to love it from afar and, in some cases, even spilling their blood in its honor.” Bramanti, Lettere, 11-12.

425 Plaisance, L’Accademia e il suo Principe, 15-17.

426 Ibid., 19-25, 185-190.

427 Cecchi, “Ritratti di Poeti,” 45; Zanrè, Cultural Non-Conformity, 20, 38.

428 “An honored academy,” to “one conducted in a brothel.” Zanrè, Cultural Non-Conformity, 66.

134 circle of exiles surrounding the Cardinal Ridolfi in Rome. Ugolino spent the rest of his life mostly outside of Florence, working in the sphere of some of the most famous enemies of the duchy.429

V.

For Ugolino, Bronzino, and their friend Varchi, the Trojan scene summoned in the

Portrait of Ugolino Martelli evidently held particular significance. In 1539, Varchi sent a letter to Bronzino, requesting that he read over a translation of the parallel portion of Ovid’s

Metamorphoses, a scholarly exercise that Varchi had completed sometime earlier.430 The selection is from Book XIII, and contains the orations by Ajax and Ulysses on the arms of

Achilles. Ulysses recounts his reaction as Agamemnon declares his intent to abandon the war at

Troy:

Jove sent a lying dream in the night To tell Agamemnon to abandon the war. […] ‘What are you doing?’ I yelled. ‘This is madness, Abandoning Troy, which is already seized. What are you taking home after ten years here Except disgrace?’ Grief made me eloquent; My words turned them around and brought them back. Agamemnon assembled all the troops, […] I stood up and urged My trembling comrades to take on the enemy,

429 Bramanti, Lettere, 18. Ugolino (serving as Bishop of Glandèves) received permission to reenter Florence to visit his father in November of 1573. He stayed for two weeks, and made peace with Duke Cosimo. In 1589, he returned again, to speak on the occasion of the translation of the relics of St. Antoninus at San Marco in Florence. Michael Cole has suggested that the event (and its commemoration in the decoration of the Salviati Chapel) interweaves, by means of a reflection on the relationships binding past and present, a subversive nuance into what is an ostensibly Medicean space. Cole, Ambitious Form, 201-211.

430 Varchi sent the letter to Bronzino and their friend the sculptor Tribolo, May 1539. BNF Magl. VII, 730, f.15-16v. The introductory letter itself (without Varchi’s translation of Ovid) is reprinted in Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet, 171-2.

135

And my words restored their faltering courage.431

The passage finishes the process begun in the Ugolino Martelli, when Agamemnon rises to speak—histato— an action eventually leading to the victory of his people over the Trojans.

Ovid’s imagery encourages parallels between Imperial Florence and ancient Troy, an analogy that appears more explicitly in the period’s contemporary political commentary.

References in Book XIII to the Trojan “walls,” “towers,” “citadel” and “fortress” conjure images of the , constructed under the aegis of the emperor and viewed by the republican exiles as a symbol of the Medicean tyranny.432 Varchi’s Storia Fiorentina reprints a canzone by Claudio Tolomei, which had been circulated during the Siege.433 The poem is written in the voice of Tuscany, and beseeches the Prince of Orange to defend Tuscany when

“mosso ad ira Cesar e Clemente, / E ’l sommo Dio rivolt’ ha gli occhi altrovi” (“Caesar [Charles

V] and [Pope] Clement [were] moved to anger / and the supreme God had turned his eyes

431 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis: W.R. Hacket Publishing Co., 2010), 356-357 (lines 262-286).

432 For the significance of the fortress, see Hale, Florence and the Medici, 124; Rubinstein, “The End of Florentine Liberty: the Fortezza da Basso,” in Florentine Studies. Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. N. Rubinstein (London: Faber, 1968): 501-32. Filippo Strozzi was kept in the fortress after his capture at Montemurlo, and eventually committed suicide within his cell. For his imprisonment and death, see Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 349-54; von Albertini, Firenze dalla Repubblica, 223.

433 When Varchi was writing his history he seems to have attached great importance to the poem, as attested to by the requests he sent to friends while searching for a copy. Busini to Varchi, Letter VI, in Lettere di Gio. Batista Busini a Benedetto Varchi sugli avenimenti dell’assedio di Firenze: estratte da un Codice della Bibliotheca Palatina (Pisa: Capurro, 1822), 36. On the potency of such canzone and its efficacy as a public mode of communicating political censure or praise, see Lauro Martines, “Poetry as Politics and Memory in Renaissance Florence and Italy,” in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, Giovanni Ciapelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 48-63 (esp. 52).

136 elsewhere”).434 Tolomei refers to imperial Florence as “questa ingorda Troia”: “this greedy

Troy.”435 (An alternative translation of the double entendre would be “this greedy whore.”)

Further links between Greeks, Trojans, and Florentines are found in Varchi’s own literary treatises, in which Ovid, Virgil, and Homer are discussed in relation to Dante, most often in a language of nostalgia and epic wanderings.436 For Varchi, the ancient violence and conspiracy evoke the contemporary political situation, and Ovid provides the quintessential literary model of exile.437

The Homeric allegory also accommodates precise political factionalism when seen in the light of the contemporary iconographical association of the Habsburg Emperors with Trojan lords. As Frances Yates has explained, to a certain extent such claims must have been fairly general, because “all the monarchs of Europe sought Trojan ancestors through whom to link their destinies and origins with imperial Rome.”438 Marie Tanner, however, has examined the role of the Trojan legacy in early modern state-building, and shown that the idea is specifically relevant to Habsburg designs on Italy in the early and mid- sixteenth century.439

434 The canzone is “Novello Marte a cui le stelle amiche.” The poem is mentioned on p. 184 of Varchi (Milanesi), vol. 2, and reprinted in full, 461-464 (portion above, 463.)

435 The lines relate how imperial Florence has “eaten up” the surrounding lands. “E conquest’arti dome, / E col tempo, mie figlie ha fatte molte: / Ben lo sa , e sal Pisa e , / E ancor molt’altre, che con ferro e fuoco / Se stesso a poco a poco / Han consumato, e, aimè! Quante volte, Per ingrassare questa ingorda troia, / C’ha pien già il mondo dal principio al fine / Di soddome, d’usure e di rapine.” Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. II, 463.

436 For example, Varchi, Opere, 2: 278, 725.

437 Lo Re, Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana, 272.

438 Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1975), 130.

439 Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). Tanner adds that “the Trojan ancestry may have seem a stale premise by the end of the middle 137

Charles V’s grandfather Maximilian I had gone to great lengths to strengthen the connection between his throne and the lords of Troy. From Hans Burgkmair, Maximilian commissioned his personal Genealogy (c.1512), a series of print portraits of his ancestors— mythical and historical. The project was meant to furnish proof of his legitimacy as ruler of the realms both north and south of the Alps. Among the ancient heroes and biblical fathers stands

“HECTOR PRIAMI MAGNI REGIS TROIANORVM FILS,” proudly bearing sword and scepter [fig. 3.6].440 Likewise in Albrecht Dürer’s design for the Emperor’s Triumphal arch

(1515), where the artist confirms, with the support of the imperial court historian, the direct descent of the Habsburg line from Hector.441

Aeneas (son of Venus and Anchises) followed Hector as ruler of the Trojan people. After the fall of Troy, Aeneas fled to Latium, and there laid the foundations for the .442

In the twelfth century, Godfried of Viterbo explained that from Troy grew both the Teutonic and

Latin empires: “Romans and Germans are of one seed [descending]…from Priam, the Great,

King of Troy…and Antenor and Aeneas were as if brothers…and the Romans and the Germans as if one populace.”443 In the fourteenth century, Dante’s de Monarchia salutes the Holy Roman

Emperor Henry VII as the legitimate Trojan heir, therefore capable of uniting the two lines in

ages, so traditional was the posture to imperial claims. Yet its unfaltering importance led each successive dynasty to invigorate its candidacy by these means” (p. 98).

440 Tanner, Last Descendant, 103-5.

441 The historian is Johannes Stabius. H.P.R., “Maximilian’s Triumphal Arch,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, 49, no. 278 (Dec., 1951), 95.

442 Tanner, Last Descendant, 254-255.

443 Tanner, Last Descendant, 89, quoting from Godefridi Viterbiensis Seculum Regum, bk. 1, 64. Gotfried was in the employ of Emperor Henry VI.

138 universal monarchy.444 When Henry (a German) invaded Italy, Dante wrote to encourage and support the Emperor in his descent across the peninsula. In the Epistle to Henry VII, written in

1311, Dante calls upon Henry not to forget

that the dominion of the Romans is confined neither by the frontiers of Italy, nor by the coast-line of three-cornered Europe. For although it has been constrained by violence to narrow the bounds of its government, yet by indefeasible right it everywhere stretches as far as the waves of Amphitrite, and scarce deigns to be circumscribed by the ineffectual waters of the Ocean. For it is written for our behoof: ‘From the fair line of Troy a Caesar shall be born, who shall bound his empire by the ocean, his glory by the stars.’445

In this passage, Dante justifies the Teutonic king’s conquest of Italy by quoting from the Aeneid, citing the prophecy made by Jupiter to Venus regarding the fate of her son Aeneas and all of

“Hector’s kin.”446

Three hundred years later, the Trojan legend proved vital to the imperial goals of the

Habsburg emperors. In the early sixteenth century, Maximilian looked back in order to justify his intentions. He commissioned Jacob Mennel’s Fürstliche Chronik Kaiser Maximilians

Geburtspiegel (1518) not only to trace the Habsburg dynasty to Hector of Troy, but also to tell a

“story that is designed to cast into the future the image desired rather than simply to tell the facts

444 Tanner, Last Descendant, 93. (Dante, de Monarchia II, ch. 3.)

445 Dante, Epistle vii in Paget Toynbee, ed. Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of Dante. Emended Text with Introduction, translation, notes… (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920), 102, 105. The quotation is from the Aeneid, I, 286-7.

446 Aeneid, I, 283-7: “the kingdom [shall] endure under Hector’s kin…thence shall Romulus take up their line, and name them Romans after his own name. I appoint to these neither period nor boundary of empire: I have given them dominion without end. …Thus it is willed…. From the fair line of Troy…etc.” Virgil, Aeneid, trans. J.W. Mackail (London: MacMillan, 1885), 9-10.

139 of a notable kin-circle’s past.”447 Christopher Wood presents a similar view with regard to the

Habsburg treatment of history:

Monuments like [Maximilian’s genealogies] were meant to look like the mere culminations of continuous traditions, the passive, unavoidable summations of old truths. […] Once installed, [such] iconography appeared ancient, inevitable, incontrovertible. […] Even Maximilian’s most directly self-glorifying monumental projects were not meant to stand outside or beyond the old legends and traditions. Rather, they insinuated themselves into those traditions and became simply their latest installments. […] Maximilian and his advisers seem to have seen themselves in continuity with the past.448 After Maximilian’s death in 1519, his grandson Charles V was raised to the role of Holy Roman

Emperor.449 Charles maintained his grandfather’s propagandist approach to history, gathering, curating, revising and manufacturing sources in order to generate a consistent, teleological narrative.

In the ever-shifting contest for control of the Italian peninsula, political iconographies were useful tools for defining allegiances. Evocation of the Trojan legacy not only appeared in erudite treatises and dynastic histories, but was also aggressively reproduced in artistic and literary representations as well. Habsburg supporters made active use of the legend as justification of imperial—and by extension, provincial—claims to sovereignty.450 In the first

447 Susan C. Karant-Nunn, “Review of The Zimmern Chronicle: Nobility, Memory, and Self- Representation in Sixteenth-Century by Erica Bastress-Dukehart,” Sixteenth Century Journal 35, no. 2 (Summer, 2004), 505.

448 Christopher Wood, “Maximilian I as Archeologist,” Renaissance Quarterly, 58, no. 4 (Winter 2005), 1128-1174.

449 Tanner, Last Descendant, 109

450 Linda Carroll, “‘Fools of the Dukes of Ferrara:’ Dosso, Ruzante, and Changing Este Alliances,” MLN 118, no. 1, Italian Issue (Jan., 2003): 60-84.

140 decades of the sixteenth century, artistic employment of the ancient story occurred in Ferrara and

Venice to signal political alignment with Habsburg goals.451

Iconographic programs in demonstrate the popularity of the Trojan theme in imperial art during the period of Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli. For example, in 1528, Andrea

Doria became dissatisfied in his alliance with Charles’ competitor Francis I and put his Genoan fleet at the service of the Empire in exchange for imperial protection.452 Perino del Vaga promptly began decorations of the Palazzo Doria, producing several frescoes of ancient triumphs that have been interpreted as allegories of contemporary political events.453 Vasari describes

Perino’s ceiling painting of the Shipwreck of Aeneas (now destroyed) as the artist’s first undertaking at the palace, in a series meant to create a ceremonial entryway for future visits by the emperor.454 The deliberate reference to Charles V is unmistakable, especially given the

451 One example from early in the century is the Trojan iconography that appeared in Venice (a political acknowledgement of Maximilian’s empire) in works on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and in paintings by Giorgione. Later, in 1522, when Alfonso d’Este joined the imperial-papal alliance, Dosso Dossi painted a frieze of episodes of the Aeneid for the camerini (Carroll “Fools of the Dukes,” 63-69).

452 For Andrea Doria, see George L. Gorse, “The Villa of Andrea Doria in Genoa: Architecture, Gardens, and Suburban Setting,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 44, no. 1 (Mar., 1985): 18-36, (esp. 20).

453 Pamela Askew, “Perino del Vaga’s Decorations for the Palazzo Doria, Genoa,” Burlington Magazine 98, no. 635 (Feb., 1956), 46-53, 46. For Marcantonio Raimondi’s Quos ego (after Raphael?) as precedent for Perino’s arrangement of the Neptune Salon and Aeneas cycle, see Bernice Davidson, “The Navigatione d’ Enea Tapestries Designed by Perino del Vaga for Andrea Doria,” Art Bulletin 72, no. 1(1990), 39.

454 Askew, Perino del Vaga’s Decorations,” 49n.; See also George. L. Gorse, “An Unpublished Description of the Villa Doria in Genoa during Charles V’s Entry, 1533,” Art Bulletin 68, no. 2 (June, 1986): 319-322. The Emperor made five triumphal entries into Genoa in this period: 1529, 1533, 1536, 1542, 1548 (Gorse, 319n). For the space as ceremonial entryway for the emperor and his entourage, see Gorse, 320n. Also, p. 321: “In the Mantuan ambassador’s words, the Villa Doria stood as a casa regia outside the city walls—“not of a gentleman, but of a King”—an appropriate base from which the emperor’s entrata and symbolic possession of the city could begin.

141 ruler’s push to republish in Italy a version of Dante’s de Monarchia, newly updated for use as specific support for Charles’ role as Henry’s successor.455 Perino’s scene repeats the same prophetic Virgilian moment quoted by Dante in his epistle to Henry VII.

Aeneas’ shipwreck is one of a series of disasters that befall the Trojan and his comrades at the start of the Aeneid, and from which they are delivered through the intercession of Jupiter and Neptune.456 In 1530, in preparation for a visit from the Emperor, Doria commissioned a series of tapestry cartoons depicting himself as Neptune, with Charles as Aeneas and Jupiter.457

Doria used the tapestries to fashion himself as (aquatic) protector of the Empire’s fate. “To

Charles V and his admiral,” Bernice Davidson has explained, “the history of Aeneas must have seemed tailor-made. […] Just as Neptune conducted the Trojans safely to Italian shores and the conquest of Latium, so Doria carried the emperor’s men to their victory over Genoa.”458 In

Bronzino’s Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune (c.1533) the admiral appears in a similar mode, attesting, at least to some degree, to Bronzino’s familiarity with the original iconography.459

455 Tanner, Last Descendant, 113; Carroll, “Fools of the Dukes of Ferrara,” 83.

456 Davidson, “Navigatione d’ Enea Tapestries,” 36. Virgil, Aeneid, I. 257ff.

457 The tapestry designs were probably carried out c. 1530, then woven in Flanders and returned to Genoa by 1536 in time for Charles V’s visit. See Davidson, “Navigatione d’ Enea Tapestries,” 36; Carroll, “Fools of the Dukes of Ferrara,” 70; Jerry Brotton writes that in the tapestries “the actions of the present neatly dovetailed with the feats of the classical past, and conferred a veneer of legitimacy and continuity on the conduct of the Habsburg forces” in “Carthage and Tunis, The Tempest and Tapestries,” in The Tempest and Its Travels, Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman eds., (London: Reaktion, 2000), 135.

458 Davidson, “Navigatione d’ Enea Tapestries,” 36-38.

459 The iconographic connection would have been weaker than it appears today, however, since originally Bronzino painted Doria with a paddle, rather than the trident (Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici, 139-142; Natali-Falciani, Bronzino: Artist and Poet, 264). It seems nevertheless unlikely that Bronzino’s exposure to Doria and his self-fashioning during the period should have left him unaware of the admiral’s association with the sea-god. The portrait (Brera, Milan) is described by Vasari as being carried out upon Bronzino’s return from Pesaro in 1532. 142

Doria repeatedly celebrates his imperial allegiance through allusions to the Trojan origins from which the Empire derives its power. As an imperial vassal, it is through this same immortal descent that Doria achieves his own might.

Like Andrea Doria, Federico Gonzaga of found himself beholden to the Emperor and chose to celebrate the connection in Trojan terms. In 1530, Charles V made a visit to

Mantua to confer upon Federico II the status of duke. The event was commemorated in the Sala di Troia at the Palazzo Te, where scenes of the Trojan War decorate the walls on Giulio

Romano’s exaggerated scale.460

In Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli, the use of a Trojan scene functions as a doubly convenient artistic allegory; the Medici had already associated their rule with the Aeneas legend.

Janet Cox-Rearick has found Raphael’s frescos in the Stanza dell’ Incendio to be evidence of the

Medici Pope Leo’s political aspirations for Florence.461 Cox-Rearick explores John Shearman’s identification of Cosimo il Vecchio in the figure of Anchises in Raphael’s Fire in the Borgo, and

Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 595. See Janet Cox-Rearick, “A ‘St. Sebastian’ by Bronzino,” Burlington Magazine, 129 (March, 1987), 158; Cox-Rearick cites Craig Hugh Smyth who writes that the portrait is “a fictive sculpture based on Bandinelli’s modelli for a statue of the Genoese admiral.” (“Bronzino Studies” [PhD diss., Princeton University, 1955], 191-196). See also Cox- Rearick, “From Bandinelli to Bronzino: The Genesis of the ‘Lamentation’ for the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 33, 1 (1989), 58. Luba Freedman discusses the conflation of Neptune with local rulers and the addition of a small crown, showing how “Renaissance renditions of this deity, rather than emphasizing his rule over the marine world, link Neptune with the contemporary ruler… the Renaissance audience knew of the political association between Neptune and ancient rulers, so eloquently expressed in the context of Virgil’s “Quos ego!” passage (Aen. 1.132 ff), and also manifested in the coins bearing the ruler’s effigy on the obverse and a statue of Neptune on the reverse.” Freedman, “Neptune in Classical and Renaissance Visual Art,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2, no. 2 (Fall, 1995), 231.

460 Bette L. Talvacchia, “Homer, Greek Heroes and Hellenism in Giulio Roman’s Hall of Troy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 235-242.

461 Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 31-2.

143 the resulting implications for Leo’s association with Aeneas.462 Further rhetorical parallels confirm the reoccurrence of Trojan themes in Medici self-fashioning in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.463

In Florence, as in Genoa, Ferrara, and Mantua, the new dukes were imperial vassals and likewise heirs to the well-developed iconography of the Empire.464 Charles V created the

Florentine principate under Alessandro de’ Medici in 1532, and subsequently strengthened his

462 “In Raphael’s group, the key to the Medicean dynastic message and the association of Aeneas with Leo is the old Anchises, who is a portrait of Cosimo Pater Patriae. The association of Cosimo with Anchises draws on an established Medici conceit going back to Ugolino Verino’s elegy on Cosimo’s death, in which Cosimo’s dying words are modeled on Anchises’ prophecy of the peaceful Augustan Golden Age. Against this background, then, Raphael’s Leo-Aeneas not only carries the memory of his ancestor Cosimo but fulfills the prophecy of a future dominion, as he leaves the destruction of the old city to establish a new Golden Age. The child Ascanius, added by Raphael to the traditional group, must then be read as a metaphor of the future, as the Medici heir who will rule over the Golden Age established by Pope Leo. […] Ascanius can only have been intended to allude to Lorenzo the younger, the great-great-grandson of Cosimo […]. This identification of Ascanius and the younger Lorenzo is also made in a contemporary poem addressed to Leo, in which the poet Regulus asks Leo to restore the Medici and Iulus (Ascanius) to Florence…” Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 32 (citing Shearman’s study of the The Vatican Stanze: Functions and Decorations, British Academy Italian Lecture 1971, 424, n. 149).

463 Echoes of Trojan iconography were still in evidence at Cosimo’s funeral in 1574. Cosimo’s son Francesco I (the new Grand Duke) sat under a black baldacchino decorated with a medallion (“una novella Medaglia cavata dall’antico”) bearing an image of Aeneas bearing Anchises. Francesco’s succession is thus presented in familiarly Trojan terms. (The description of the event appears in the commemorative funeral book: Descritione della pompa funerale fatta nelle essequie del sermo. Sig. Cosimo de’ Medici, gran duca di Toscana, Florence, 1574). The image of Aeneas and Anchises is explained as a depiction of Francesco taking up the responsibilities of his father (32). On Cosimo’s funeral, see Eve Borsook, “Art and Politics at the Medici Court I: The Funeral of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 12, 1/2 (Dec., 1965), 31.

464 Tanner reports that due to “the dependent status [the Italian lords] bore to the imperial scion, these provincial rulers could claim such a venerable ancestry for themselves when they formed part of the imperial phalanx. [….] According to imperial theory, as the emperor’s liege, the feudal lord stood in Caesar’s place as the representative of these directives in his own province. [….] Thus with an eye to confirming the emperor’s legitimacy, and by reflection their own, no energy was spared in preparing a public display of imperial iconography.” (Last Descendant, 115.)

144

Tuscan influence by giving his natural daughter Margaret in marriage to the Duke.465 Later, it was the Emperor’s Spanish troops, acting in defense of Cosimo I, who were responsible for the defeat of Filippo Strozzi’s fuorusciti at Montemurlo.466 As an allegory of contemporary political struggles, the Homeric battle invoked in the Ugolino Martelli employs an established connection between the Medici and the Trojans, one reinforced by Medici and Habsburg family lore. The lines from the Iliad reproduced in the portrait can therefore be understood as a rejection of the

Imperial-Medicean domination of Florence.

VI.

The audacity of the republican exiles in challenging the exaggerated strength of the

Imperial-Medicean Goliath finds a perfect complement in the David standing in the background of Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli. As mentioned above, in the sixteenth century, the

Martelli David was thought to be a work by Donatello, a testament to the sculptor’s friendship with the Martelli family. In Ugolino’s portrait, the statue masquerades as an entirely benign element: its presence can be justified by its status as a treasured heirloom, or by its ability (as the representation of a distinctly Florentine subject by a celebrated Florentine sculptor) to convey an apolitical spirit of artistic campanilismo.

Nevertheless, in Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli, the statue also carries the accumulated weight of a century’s worth of Florentine republicanism.467 As a David by Donatello, it would

465 Segni, Istorie fiorentine, 232-3, 245, 295.

466 Cosimo would spend his tenure as head of state working to move the duchy towards independence from its origin as a Habsburg fief.

467 On the importance an object like the Martelli David would have had for the family—bearing witness to the Martelli’s connection to the city—and the accrual of historical significance it would have undergone in the century after its creation, see Patricia Lee Rubin, “Art and the Imagery of Memory,” in Art, Memory, and Family, 67-85.

145 have called to mind the sculptor’s more famous marble and bronze Davids, together with their political connotations—explicitly anti-Medicean associations largely resulting from the statues’ treatment in the years since their creation. The Martelli David’s appearance in the Portrait of

Ugolino Martelli is charged with militant anti-tyrannical feeling, which in the 1530s had surged and found symbolic expression in Michelangelo’s David.

The Martelli David depicts the young Israelite standing victorious over the severed head of his enemy. His stance is relaxed, and the sling hangs loosely at his side. Weight on one leg,

David rests a casual foot across the giant’s jaw. Bronzino’s painted version is immediately recognizable, though possessed of a vitality lacking in the original. In transferring the boy’s image from stone into paint, the artist made several small alterations, most notably the removal of a supporting tree-stump, become unnecessary in the David’s new medium.468

During Ugolino’s lifetime, the Martelli David was held in great esteem, its value amplified by the attribution to Donatello. In his Vita of Donatello, Vasari reconstructs the circumstances in which the object is assumed to have entered the Martelli family collection. 469

He details a close relationship between the sculptor and Ugolino’s ancestors, particularly

Roberto di Niccolò Martelli, in whose home Donatello stayed in his youth.470 Vasari connects

468 Volker Herzner has argued that Bronzino’s lack of fidelity to the original sculpture indicates that pure pride of ownership cannot have been the sole justification for the inclusion of the David in Ugolino’s portrait, implying some symbolic or emblematic significance (Herzner, “David Florentinus,” 124).

469 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 408.

470 “Fu allevato Donatello dalla fanciullezza in casa di Ruberto Martelli; e per le buone qualità e per lo studio della virtù sua non solo meritò d’essere amato da lui, ma ancora da tutta quella nobile famiglia.” Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 408. For Roberto, see Crum, “Roberto Martelli.” For Roberto Martelli and Donatello, see Ugolino di Niccolò Martelli, Ricordanze dal 1433 al 1483, 140-141; Lauro Martines, “I Martelli e il ritorno di Cosimo Medici, 1434,” Archivio Storico Italiano 117 (1959): 29-43.

146

Roberto’s personal patronage to several works by Donatello, and gives an account of the affection felt by the sculptor for the entire Martelli family. In the 1568 version of the Vite,

Vasari notes that the family retained “un David di braccia tre,” as well as “molte altre cose da lui, in fede della servitù e dell’amore che a tal famiglia portava, donate liberalissimamente.”471 A

David by Donatello appears in household inventories kept by Ugolino’s grandfather (1488) and father (1578).472

471 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, III, 254.

472 For the record of Luigi di Luigi Martelli (Ugolino’s father), see ASF, Carte Strozziane, V serie, 1475, c. XXVI; The first record of the statue being in Ugolino’s line of the family is recorded in the private notes of our Ugolino’s grandfather, Luigi di Ugolino, who lists the statue among his belongings in 1488. The Martelli David remained in the family’s collection until 1916, when it left Florence for the United States. It was sold as an unfinished early work by Donatello, perhaps contemporaneous with the sculptor’s more famous marble David, and the cousin of his later bronze version (both in the Bargello). The sale is documented by Osvald Sirén, “Two Florentine Sculptures Sold to America,” Burlington Magazine 29, no. 161 (Aug., 1916): 197-199. The article outlines then-current scholarship on the work, noting that it is generally assumed to be incomplete and due in some degree to workshop manufacture. The statue is considered “misshapen” by Sirén, who quotes Wilhelm von Bode’s qualification of its status as “much less happy” than the bronze David (197). In the mid-twentieth century, attribution of the Martelli David shifted from Donatello to each of the Rossellino brothers as well as to Desiderio da Settignano, and remains unconfirmed. Ugolino’s father Luigi Martelli records the statue as being by Donatello, although the National Gallery now attributes it to Antonio Rossellino (the opinion is not universally accepted). Donatello and Roberto appear together in the act of admiring the statue in Antonio Marini’s 1822 fresco, located in the Palazzo Martelli on via Zanetti. See Louis A. Waldman, B. Preyer, “The patronage portrait in late renaissance Florence: an enigmatic portrait of Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai and its commemoration,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 54, no. 1 (2010- 2012), 149. The attribution to Donatello was questioned first by Leo Planiscig in 1947 a conclusion supported by Janson (among others) in 1958 (H. W. Janson, The Sculpture of Donatello, II [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1958], 21-3) and subsequently altered to Antonio Rossellino by John Pope-Hennessey in 1959 (“The Martelli David,”) and Bernardo Rossellino by Frederick Hartt (“New Light on the Rossellino Family,” Burlington Magazine 102 [1961]: 387- 92.) In 1982 Herzner argued for the authorship of Desiderio da Settignano (“David Florentinus,” 107-125). In Donatello e il Potere (129-131), Parronchi maintains the Donatello attribution. The National Gallery currently attributes the work to Bernardo or Antonio Rossellino. These debates over origin are entirely irrelevant to a study of Bronzino’s portrait, because at the time of its painting, Donatello’s authorship was undisputed. Acknowledging this belief is critical to an analysis of the statue’s presence in the Ugolino Martelli, because the attribution connects this statue to the established Florentine iconography of tyrannicides. 147

The previous chapter outlined the history of Davidian imagery in republican art and rhetoric, beginning in the early fifteenth century and continuing through the Siege of Florence in

1529-30. No matter the sculptors’ original intentions, the explicitly anti-Medicean connotations of the Davids of Donatello and Michelangelo were shaped and reinforced by their locations, official treatment, and public response. By the time of the Siege, Michelangelo’s statue in the

Piazza della Signoria had come to be seen as an avatar of the republic, an icon revered by its supporters, and attacked by its opponents.473 In the above examination of Pontormo’s

Halberdier and Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea, it was proposed that these paintings invoke the marble Davids of Donatello and Michelangelo in order to help convey Francesco Guardi’s allegiance to the republic, and his willingness to similarly fight in its defense.

Still, some scholars have concluded that in the Ugolino Martelli, the figure of David has lost its former civic meaning. Thus Cropper writes: “while Pontormo had conceived Francesco

Guardi as the contemporary embodiment of a Donatello David, Bronzino’s sitter counts such a figure among his cultural possessions, together with his palace and the copies of Bembo, Virgil, and Homer that he displays before him.”474 Brock has treated the biblical hero as a purely decorative element, devoid of any ideological significance: “furnish[ing] nothing more or less than a formal trace of fiorentinità, […] attached to the architectural scheme of the cortile.”475 In

Baker’s analysis, the David has entirely lost its republican connotation, its meaning now realigned to become an “endorsement of Medici rule.”476

473 See note 228 above.

474 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 106.

475 Brock, Bronzino, 121.

476 The David is, in Baker’s view, demonstrative of “a new understanding of liberty” in which the image of David now “served to defend the Medici principate” (Baker, “From a Civic World 148

Though the republic fell in 1530, ceding control of the city to the besieging imperial forces, it should not be assumed that this transfer of power would effect an immediate and pervasive alteration in the meaning of republican icons. When Bronzino included the Martelli

David in his portrait of Ugolino, its militant symbolism was still intact, and in fact had been made even more divisive through frequent invocation by republican dissidents after the establishment of the duchy.

In the first years following the defeat of the last republic, Medicean attempts to neutralize the force of Michelangelo’s David only drew attention to the statue’s affiliation with the republic.

As discussed in Chapter Two, the Medici, hoping to divert attention from the David’s anti-

Medicean tone, revoked Michelangelo’s commission for a partner statue for the David. The new leadership gave the commission to the Medicean sculptor Baccio Bandinelli instead.477 When

Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus was unveiled in the Piazza della Signoria in 1534, the public response was intensely negative. The statue was widely ridiculed, despite the fact that such mockery constituted a serious political offense: Duke Alessandro imprisoned the authors of

to a Court Society,” 264). While Duke Cosimo’s skillful reappropriation of republican symbols has been widely noted, this does not apply to images of the young David in the 1530s. While in later decades Cosimo certainly presented himself as the biblical hero, there are no undisputed occasions of this iconography used by the Medici in the first decade of the duchy, perhaps not even until the late 1540s. The antityrannical rhetoric that flourished at the occasion of Alessandro’s murder was still too volatile, and too closely associated with the opposition.

477 Joannides, “Two Drawings”; Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’.”

149 critical lampoons.478 The rancor directed towards Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus seems to have been driven, at least in part, by political, rather than aesthetic concerns.479

In these early years of the duchy, Davidian references were plentiful, encouraged by the tyrannical reputation of the loathsome Duke Alessandro, who made a fitting Goliath.480 Luigi

Alamanni bitterly pronounced him “the most bloody and impious tyrant / that Nature ever produced on earth.”481 An anonymous epigraph condemned Alessandro as the “most monstrous and most shameful Tyrant of Florence.”482 In 1534, Michelangelo left the city for good, writing an allegorical poem that characterized the contemporary Medici as cruel giants, squashing their citizens under their feet.483 Jacopo Nardi, quoted in the previous chapter at his oration to Charles

V, named the republicans David, and the dukes, David’s enemies.

478 Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’,” 176; Louis Waldman, “Miracol’ novo et raro’: Two Unpublished Contemporary Satires on Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 38, 2/3 (1994): 419-427; Detlef Heikamp, “Poesie in vituperio del Bandinelli,” Paragone 175 (1964): 59-68.

479 Criticism of Bandinelli’s work was, according to Bush, driven by the fact that it was “originally commissioned by the Florentine republic from the beloved Michelangelo but was ultimately completed by the unpopular Bandinelli for Medici rulers.” Bush, “Bandinelli’s ‘Hercules’,” 164. She adds that the “clash between Michelangelo and Bandinelli has also been seen as a political allegory, glamorizing the early Medici and the government of the republic for whom Michelangelo worked as enlightened and democratic while disparaging the later Medici who employed Bandinelli as corrupt and decadent.”

480 For the history of this period see Spini, Cosimo I. A discussion of the 1539 wedding of Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo as cultural turning point appears on p. 136.

481 Nicholas Scott Baker, “Power and Passion in Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Sexual and Political Reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 19, no.3 (Sept., 2010), 438 (citing ASF, Carte Strozziane, Serie I, 95: 135r).

482 Baker, “Power and Passion,” 438, citing ASF, CS, Serie 1, 96: 35r.

483 James Saslow, Poetry of Michelangelo: An annotated translation (New Haven: Yale UP, 1991), 171-174; Seymour, Michelangelo’s David, 68-72. On Michelangelo’s partisanship, see Charles de Tolnay, “Michelangelo’s Political Opinions,” in Wallace, ed., Michelangelo: Selected Readings: 19-60. See also de Tolnay, Michelangelo, 4: “Around 1545, about six years after the 150

When entreaties to the Emperor to depose Alessandro were unsuccessful, the republican exiles called upon Francis I to act “come uno secondo David,” liberating Florence from the yoke of the Medici.484 When this too failed, it was Alessandro’s assassin who took up the hero’s mantle. The Duke’s killer was celebrated not only as Brutus, but also as Florence’s long-awaited

David.485 On January 18th, 1537, days after the assassination of Duke Alessandro, Nardi wrote in celebratory tones of David’s victory over Goliath. In a letter addressed to Cardinal Ridolfi

(Ugolino’s mentor and relative), he gleefully proclaimed that divine Providence had finally seen fit to end the insolence of the haughty giant, acting through the hand of his servant David:

“Divine Providence has now seen fit to strike down the insolence of the haughty giant, hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the hand of his servant David (provided for us in this valiant young man).”486

execution of the Bust of Brutus, Michelangelo wrote a madrigal which contains a similar attitude toward tyrants: here Florence, personified as a beautiful woman, speaks to the Florentine exiles. The latter lament the servitude of their native city and the injustice that is being done to it because one individual had confiscated that which was the property of all (‘Un sol s’appropria quel ch’è dato a tanti.’) But Florence comforts her audience: ‘Col gran timor non gode [il tiranno] il gran peccato.’” The poem to which de Tolnay refers begins with an address by the exiles to Fiorenza: “Per molti, donna, anzi per mille amanti / Creata fosti, e d’ angelica forma; / Or par che in ciel si dorma, / Se un sol ‘appropria quell ch’è dato a tanti. / Ritorna ai nostri pianti. / Il sol degli occhi tuoi, che par che schivi / Chì, del suo dono, in tal miserie è nato.” It concludes with Fiorenza’s response: “—Deh! Non turbate i vostri desir santi, / Che chi di me par che vi spogli e privi, / Col gran timore non gode il gran peccato. / Chè degli Amanti è men felice stato / Quello, ove il gran desir gran copia affrena, Che una miseria di speranza piena.” The worshipful and loving relationship between the exiles and the beautiful lady Fiorenza (possessed of Venus’s shining eyes) should remind the reader of the proposed reading of the Pygmalion and Galatea in the first two chapters of this dissertation.

484 “come uno secondo David…per benefizio del popolo cristiano.” Jacopo Nardi, “Orazione fatta in Napoli dalli fuorusciti fiorentini allo imperatore Carlo V nel tempo che vi era il duca Alessandro de’ Medici l’anno 1535,” in Nardi, Istorie, 389.

485 The usage of “Brutus” for Lorenzino was commonplace. See pages 153-4 below.

486 See page 101, note 310 above, especially as regards Nardi’s change of the biblical phrase from David’s “house” to his “hand,” underscoring the action involved in committing tyrannicide.

151

The significance of David’s victory over Goliath lies precisely in its unlikely odds. In the

Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, the Martelli David, like the Homeric excerpt, offers encouragement in the face of seemingly assured defeat. In the fifteenth century, Florentine davidian iconography had established the shepherd as a tyrannicide whose strength was dependent on

God’s heavenly aide, bestowed upon the boy for the righteousness of his cause. It is in this mode that Donatello’s famous Davids celebrated the small republic’s victories over more powerful foes.487 Writing about Donatello’s bronze version, Robert Williams has stressed the importance of David’s weakness in comparison with his enemy and God, and the hero’s dependence, therefore, upon faith.488 This religious element of Davidian imagery is useful for understanding the figure’s political importance for the outmatched republicans, because in a society that had declared Christ to be its king, devotion to the republic was devotion to God.489 As Antonio

Geremicca has recently written, Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli “may embody the hope for a better future for Florence and her citizens,” in a battle fought by “a new class of young aristocrats, well-lettered, like David, and like David, cleverly waiting for the opportune moment to fight.”490

487 See Caglioti, Donatello e i Medici.

488 Williams, “Virtus Perficitur,” 223.

489 In Bartolomeo Cavalcanti’s 1530 military oration, quoted in both of the previous chapters, he promises that a parallel faith in the Florentine republic will save its young soldiers against overwhelming odds. “O love of liberty,” he cries, “how you are efficacious! O love of country, how you are potent! [....] You make it so the splendor of the barbarous weapons does not blind our eyes; so we can gaze into the ferocious faces of our rabid enemies; so that our great disadvantages are the greatest pleasure. [….] You arm and fortify our once naked and weak souls, making us invincible to the most fearsome things. [….] What could be a more just or honorable task, than to defend for you, Florence, your liberty, threatened by the most mighty and tyrannical princes?” Cavalcanti, “Orazione,” 13-14.

490 Geremicca, Bronzino, 130. In his excellent new volume, Geremicca’s attention to the painting and the historical moment leads him to propose this republican reading that aligns with 152

VII

Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli is urgent yet ambiguous, and in its ambiguity the painting retains its recourse to a denial of political dissent. Although Ugolino’s appearance has been described as “purely suited to a civil world of courtly elegance in which any military reference is completely lacking,” it may instead camouflage its relevance to the present in an engagement with the past—a mode of dissimulation favored by the refined and rebellious society cultivated at the court of Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi.491

Ridolfi’s scholarly circle recuperated antiquities “in an attempt to render them fertile models for present action.”492 For the collection of Cardinal Ridolfi, Michelangelo sculpted his infamous Bust of Brutus, in which the artist used the subject’s classical pedigree to comment on present political realities [fig. 3.7]. Like the David and Iliad in the Ugolino Martelli, the context of the commission make the Brutus’s motivations startlingly clear: sculpted after the assassination of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, the Brutus’s ancient pretensions do little to hide its celebratory content.493 Like Varchi’s commemorative verses dedicated to Brutus, the bust

my own. My writing of this chapter was complete before his book was published, but since that time his support as a reader has been invaluable.

491 The quotation is from Cropper, “Reading Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” 245.

492 Costa, Michelangelo alle Corti, 34. : “…si recuperavano i modelli antichi, cercando di renderli fertili per le azioni presenti.” Costa goes on to note that “Oltre a questra dimensione stratificata nel tempo, all’interno della biblioteca vi era anche una fitta interrelazione tra diverse arti.” This approach to the paragone of the arts is again quite similar to that demonstrated by Ugolino in his portrait, in which painting, sculpture, architecture, prose and poetry combine to create a statement of his identity. (Brock’s 2002 monograph is particularly interested in questions of the paragone.)

493 See, for example, Segni, Istorie fiorentine, 349: “…chiamandolo per nome di Bruto e di liberatore della patria, fu ancora visitato da molti altri ed onorato, ed aggrandito secondo l’affezione delle parti per quel fatto di raro esempio.” And on 464: “detto il‘Bruto Fiorentino’.” See also Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. III, 262. Iacopo Marmitta ends a sonnet with the lines “Arno del novo Bruto il chiaro onore / Cantava, e gli rendeva grazie infinite,” in Rime 153 honors Alessandro’s murderer.494 James C. Scott has suggested that “every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a ‘hidden transcript’ that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant,” and that the “hidden transcript is typically expressed openly—albeit in disguised form.”495 The republican reading of the Ugolino Martelli is available only to those able to read Homer in the Ancient Greek and to understand the subtle import of the selected passage. Though the Martelli David may have been bolder in its various references to contemporary and historical political struggles, the statue’s presence can easily be explained in neutral terms. Like the Brutus, Ugolino’s portrait dissimulates by framing its dissent in seemingly innocuous terms of literature, history, and art. What appears to be a straightforward statement of literary aptitude is equally open to reading as a gesture of republican allegiance— but only by those possessed of the erudition necessary to do so. The Portrait of Ugolino Martelli is a highly subversive picture, safely speaking its opposition in the language of the past.

Diverse di Molti Eccellentissimi Autori, edited by Ludovico Domenichi, vol. 1 (Venice: Giolito 1545), 95. This celebration of Alessandro’s murder did not cease with the establishment of Cosimo’s reign: Lorenzino was referred to as Bruto even twenty years into Cosimo’s reign. For example, Donato Giannoti to Benedetto Varchi, (March 1564) ASF, Carte Strozziane, Prima Serie, CXXXII, 86v.

494 Among Varchi’s honorary compositions in celebration of Lorenzino is an inscription designed to be appended to the Medici’s pittura infiamante of Alessandro’s murderer: “When Brutus in Elysium heard that the young, cruel tyrant had fallen by a young man’s hand, and when the talk had chanced to fall upon Caesar, he said, “Many that we are, no we are outdone by one man, and that a youth.” (…Cum iuvenis destra iuvenem cecidisse tyrannum /immitem audisset Brutus in Elysiis; / et forte inciderat sermo de Caesare, victi / tot viri ab uno, inquit, iam sumus et puero…” Lorenzino had a medal made in his own honor depicting himself as Brutus. See Donald James Gordon’s chapter on “Giannotti, Michelangelo, and the Cult of Brutus,” in The Renaissance Imagination, edited by Stephen Orgel and Donald James Gordon (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980): 233-246 (esp. 236, 238).

495 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale UP, 1990), xii.

154

CHAPTER FOUR: A More Audacious Portrait

In the spring of 1542, Ugolino Martelli traveled to a villa in Prato, the home of his sister

Elisabetta and her husband, Carlo Neroni.496 Like Ugolino, Carlo’s likeness is captured in a portrait painted during the years surrounding the fall of the last republic and subsequent establishment of the Medici duchy [fig. 4.1]. And like Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli,

Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni challenges scholars to distinguish between Medicean and republican imagery in a period of social unrest. The Carlo Neroni is currently considered a republican picture datable to the period of the Siege of Florence (c. 1529-30), but closer examination of the portrait suggests that it may instead originate in c. 1538-9, around the time of

Carlo’s wedding to Elisabetta—nearly a decade after the republic’s defeat.497

In spite of this chronological shift, the Carlo Neroni’s republican content should not be invalidated, nor recast as a demonstration of Medicean allegiance. As in the case of Bronzino’s

Ugolino Martelli, Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni seems to employ traditionally republican imagery as a means of signaling the sitter’s republican sentiment, thereby expressing dissent during a period of Medici rule. Due to the Carlo Neroni’s close compositional affinity with

496 Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), Carte Strozziane, V Serie,1482, 49v.

497 Oil on panel, London, National Gallery (private loan). For the dating to c. 1529-30, see Carol Plazzotta, “The Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni)” (cat. no. 69) in Lorne Campbell ed., Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian (New Haven: Yale UP, 2008): 224-6. Luigi Martelli (father to Elisabetta and Ugolino) records the wedding in ASF Carte Strozziane, Quinta Serie, 1475, f 178r. The connection between Ugolino Martelli and Carlo Neroni has not been noted in earlier studies of either portrait.

155 other undated paintings by both Pontormo and Bronzino, this reconsideration of the portrait also has important implications for several other well-known Florentine portraits.

Though mentioned by Vasari, Carlo Neroni’s portrait was misidentified for more than two hundred years.498 During the eighteenth century, the painting belonged to the Gerini collection in Florence. On the occasion of a 1759 inventory, an engraved copy after the portrait was made, which bore an inscription recording the dimensions of the painting and an attribution to Bronzino’s pupil [fig. 4.2].499 After the Carlo Neroni left Florence in 1825, this engraving was the only record of the painting available to scholars until the twenty-first century, when Francis Russell recognized the portrait in a British private collection.500 Russell published his discovery in 2008, proposing that this Young Man in a Red Cap be identified as

Pontormo’s missing Portrait of Carlo Neroni.501

The painting is in excellent condition, and now hangs in London’s National Gallery. The young man poses against an abstract background of green. One hand, bearing a ring, hovers near

498 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 275. For the painting’s provenance and a bibliography, see Plazzotta, “Young Man in a Red Cap.”

499 The print is by Violante Vanni, after a drawing by Lorenzo Lorenzi. It was made for a 759 inventory of the artwork belonging to the collection of the Marchese Andrea Gerini: Raccolta di ottanta stampe rappresentanti i Quadri più scelte de’ Signori Marchesi Gerini (Florence, 1759), and appears on page 34, plate 28. See Gerhard Ewald “Appunti sulla Galleria Gerini…” in Kunst des Barock in der Toskana. Studien zur Kunst unter der letzten Medici (Munich: Bruckmann, 1976):344-358, esp. 356, n. 22.

500 Working only from the print, Ewald attributed the painting to Pontormo, as did several Pontormo scholars. See, for example, Janet Cox-Rearick, “An Important Painting by Pontormo from the Collection of Chauncey D. Stillman,” sales catalogue entry (Christie’s, New York, 31st May 1989, 43 n. 55); Simon, “Bronzino’s Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” 389-390; Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo (Catalogue raisonnée) (Paris and Milan: Electa, 1994), 244-245, (cat. no. 79a, “Ritratto di Cosimo I con una lettera”).

501 Francis Russell, “A Portrait of a Young Man in Black by Pontormo,” Burlington Magazine 50 (Oct., 2008): 675-77.

156 the pommel of his sword, while the other clasps a letter to his chest: the writing legible but fragmented by his fingers. Besides the startling red cap that gives the painting its name, his dress is subdued, layered in black and white. A bright light enters from the left, warming the tones of clothes and skin. The light digs deep and brooding shadows across his face and traces lustering highlights on his silvery sleeves. Although the brushwork is generally rather smooth and tight, there are passages where the satin of the sleeves cedes its illusionism, giving way to patterned paint. Strokes of pale color are dragged through darker areas of shadow, building evocative ripples and folds in the billowing fabric.

In contrast, the matte black tunic is rendered with quiet precision. Largely free from embellishment, it is decorated simply with slashes in the leather that allow a glimpse of the satin underneath. Long vertical cuts run down the chest to taper at his neat waist, hips thrust slightly forward. At the shoulders the tunic is finished with a scalloped edge, each half-moon punctuated by pairs of short staccato cuts. Where this border interrupts the light, its shadow repeats the detail in negative—the doubled pattern adding a lacey visual delicacy to an otherwise restrained line.

Any sartorial refinement or gracefulness of figure is overshadowed by the intensity of the young man’s gaze. Standing at an angle to the picture plane, he rotates his upper body towards us. Dropping his right shoulder and twisting his neck, the young man turns to see something beyond the viewer, away to his left. The dark eyes continue the movement, pressing dramatically against their walls. Deep lines form between his brows, emphasized by the raking light. What he sees causes him to pull his handsome features into a slight grimace, compressing his lips and narrowing his eyes. The effect is one of controlled response—poised, watchful, and casually confrontational.

157

When the panel was sold in 1825, it was identified as a portrait of the Neapolitan fisherman Masaniello, famous for leading a rebellion against his city’s Spanish Hapsburg government in 1647.502 The London sitter would make an oddly well-dressed fisherman, but the mistake may yet originate in his ensemble of white and black, topped with a brilliant cap:

Masaniello is typically shown outfitted in a similar color scheme, and always with a prominent red hat.503 And although the sitter is undeniably elegant, his misidentification as the notorious rebel Masaniello calls attention to the portrait’s bellicose air—an important point when considering the young man’s identity and the portrait’s potential political sentiment.

I.

The quality of London Young Man in a Red Cap is indisputable and its authorship by

Pontormo has been widely accepted, as has Russell’s identification of the sitter as

Carlo Neroni.504 In this case, however, the question of the young man’s identity is less straightforward than the issue of artistic attribution. The proposal that Pontormo’s Young Man in a Red Cap is the portrait of Carlo Neroni depends primarily upon the portrait’s similarity to one of the most controversial paintings of the Florentine sixteenth century: Pontormo’s Halberdier

502 For the Gerini sale, see Costamagna, Pontormo, 244; Martina Ingendaay, “La collezione Gerini a Firenze: documenti inediti relative a quadri, disegni e incisioni,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 51, 3/4 (2007): 409-476.

503 On depictions of Masaniello, see Wendy Wassyng Roworth, “The Evolution of : Masaniello’s Revolt and Other Disasters in Seventeenth-Century Naples,” The Art Bulletin 75, no. 2 (Jun., 1993); 219-234, esp. 221. One seventeenth-century example is Michelangelo Cerquozzi’s 1648 The Revolt of Masaniello (Galleria Spada, Rome); another shows the Neapolitan wearing a black vest over a white shirt, red cap in place, with hand on hip (attributed to Onofrio Palumbo, location unknown).

504 Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap”; Costamagna, “Pontormo’s Lautenspieler. Ein wiederentdecktes Bildnis aus der Zeit der Florentiner Republik,” in Pontormo: Meisterwerke des Manierismus in Florenz, trans. Eva Dewes, ed. Bastian Eclercy (Hannover: Landesmuseum, 2013): 97-105.

158

(Francesco Guardi), currently at the Getty. The London and Getty paintings are unequivocally alike [fig. 4.3]. The two panels are exactly the same height, and fall within a centimeter in width, with the pose and dimensions of the figures so similar as to imply that Pontormo relied upon a single cartoon for both images’ design.505

Given these affinities, the London and Getty pictures seem well suited to Vasari’s record of two portraits by Pontormo, depicting Carlo Neroni and Francesco Guardi: in a passage from his vita of Pontormo, Vasari explicitly links the pictures. He begins by describing a biblical scene—The Martyrdom of Ten Thousand—painted by Pontormo for a Florentine orphanage.

Vasari goes on to note that a second, slightly altered version of this image was made for Carlo

Neroni, of whom Pontormo also painted a portrait:

For Carlo Neroni he made another painting similar to that described above, but with only the Martyrs and the Angel baptizing them; and later, the portrait of Carlo himself.506

Vasari next describes how, “similmente,” during the time of the Siege, Pontormo painted a portrait of Francesco Guardi dressed as a soldier:

During the time of the Siege of Florence, he likewise portrayed Francesco Guardi in the costume of a soldier, which was a very beautiful work.507

The cover for this “opera bellissima” was the Pygmalion and Galatea, carried out by Pontormo’s pupil and friend, the painter Bronzino:

505 Halberdier: oil on panel transferred to canvas (92x72 cm.); Neroni: oil on panel (92.1 x 73 cm.). On portrait replication techniques used by Bronzino and Pontormo, see, for example, Janet Cox-Rearick and Mary Westerman Bulgarella, “Public and Private Portraits of Cosimo de’ Medici and Eleonora di Toledo: Bronzino’s Paintings of His Ducal Patrons in Ottawa and Turin,” Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 25, No. 49 (2004): 101-159 (esp.127-9).

506 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 275: “Un altro quadro simile al sopradetto fece a Carlo Neroni, ma con la battaglia de’ Martiri sola, e l’Angelo che gli battezza; ed apresso, il ritratto di esso Carlo.”

507 Ibid: “Ritrasse similmente, nel tempo dell’assedio di Fiorenza, Francesco Guardi in abito di soldato, che fu opera bellissima.”

159

and on the cover of this picture Bronzino painted Pygmalion praying to Venus, so that his statue, receiving the spirit, would awake, and (as is told by the poets,) become flesh and blood. […] Once the Siege was ended…508

Many art historians have argued that Pontormo’s Halberdier is the portrait of Francesco

Guardi whose origins Vasari describes above, and it has been treated as such in the previous chapters because the supporting arguments—particularly as put forward by Elizabeth Cropper— seem entirely convincing.509 The reemergence of the Young Man in a Red Cap—and especially its identification as the lost Carlo Neroni—appears to confirm the Guardi identification because the discovery seems to yield a pair of republican portraits perfectly suited to Vasari’s formula.510

In other words, the Portrait of the Young Man in a Red Cap looks very much like the

Halberdier, and, as a result, the two paintings can be understood as the Carlo Neroni and

508 Ibid: “e nel coperchio poi di questo quadro dipinse Bronzino, Pigmalione che fa orazione a Venere, perchè la sua statua, ricevendo lo spirito, s’avviva e divenga (come fece, secondo le favole di poeti) di carne e d’ossa. […] Finito l’assedio…”

509 This theory has been most actively supported by the efforts of Luciano Berti and, most thoroughly, by Elizabeth Cropper. See Berti, Pontormo, (Florence: Il Fiorino, 1966); idem, L’opera completa di Pontormo (Milan: Rizzoli, 1973); idem, “L’ ‘Alabardiere’ del Pontormo,” Critica d’arte 6, no. 55 (1990): 39-49; idem, Pontormo e il suo tempo (Ponte alle Grazie: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1993). Cropper, “Ritratto di Francesco Guardi L’Alabardiere” (cat. entry), in Antonio Natali, Alessandro Cecchi, Carlo Sisi eds., L’Officina della Maniera: varietà e fierezza nell’arte Fiorentina del Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche 1494-1530 (Venice: Marsilio, 1996): 376; idem, Portrait of a Halberdier. In recent years, the most important supporter is Salvatore Lo Re, (Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana), who provides a thorough review of the debate and adds further historical support for the Francesco Guardi identification. In Natali and Falciani, Bronzino, the Guardi identification is taken as a given. A similar approach to the issue was taken in the 2014 exhibition dedicated to Pontormo and Rosso. See, for example, Massimo Firpo’s statement in the catalogue, declaring that “the observations made by Elizabeth Cropper provide a very convincing demonstration that the famous portrait does not depict the young Cosimo de’ Medici, as is still maintained by Antonio Pinelli” (Firpo, “Pontormo, Rosso and the Medici. Diverging Political Paths” in Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, eds., Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of [Florence: Mandragora, 2014]: 277-283, 283, n.16).

510 Russell, “A Young Man in Black by Pontormo”; Plazzotta, “A Young Man in a Red Cap.”

160

Francesco Guardi: Vasari’s “ritrasse similmente” resolved. Since the identification of the

Young Man in a Red Cap as proposed by Russell is thus almost entirely dependent upon the identity of the Halberdier, it seems important to recognize that not all scholars agree with that painting’s association with Francesco Guardi.

Indeed, for the past fifty years, scholars have been divided as to whether the Halberdier is republican or Medicean in sympathy—two theories that directly impact the identification of the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap. The two hypotheses are anathema, and each has been well supported. In the last fifteen years, however, since Elizabeth Cropper published her convincing analysis of the Halberdier, the association with Duke Cosimo seems to have rightly lost favor, giving way to Francesco Guardi. Nevertheless, for certain scholars, doubt remains as to whether the Getty painting depicts a guardsman of the last republic, or the young Duke

Cosimo himself, leader of the newly autocratic Florentine state.511

511 Hermann Voss first identified the painting as Pontormo’s Guardi in 1920 (Die Malerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz [Berlin: G. Grote]). Two years later, Frank Jewett Mather argued that the Halberdier could not be the Guardi, based on the size difference with Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea, but agreed with the dating to c. 1529-30. (“The Halberdier by Pontormo,” Art in America 10 [1922]: 66-69). The painting was first connected with Duke Cosimo in 1959, when Herbert Keutner connected the painting to an entry in a 1612 inventory of Riccardi Collection in Florence, describing a “ritratto… si crede di mano di detto Jac.o dell’Ecc.mo Duca Cosimo quand’era giovanetto, con calze rosse, e beretta rossa, ed una pica in mano con arme a’ canto, e giubbone bianco, e collana al’ collo.” Keutner dates the painting to after Montemurlo (1 August, 1537). Herbert Keutner, “Zu einigen Bildnissen des frühen Florentiner Manierismus,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 7 (1959): 139- 154. In 1964, Janet Cox-Rearick proposed a Medicean interpretation of the apparently republican symbolism of the sitter’s hat-badge (Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo). Other supporters of the Halberdier-as-Cosimo theory included, for example, Kurt W. Forster, “Probleme um Pontormos Porträtmalerei (I),” Pantheon 22 (1964): 376-385, and idem, ‘Metaphors of Rule”; Simon, “Bronzino’s Portraits of Cosimo I”; Costamanga and A. Fabre, Les portraits florentins du début du XVI siècle à l’avènement de Cosimo I: : Catalogue raisonné d’Albertinelli à Pontormo, 5 vols. (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 1986) and idem, Pontormo, 1994. Maurice Brock, Bronzino (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), gave a non-committal response, writing that “it cannot be definitively excluded” that the Halberdier is not Cosimo (Brock, 52). In response to Cropper’s 1997 volume, Antonio Pinelli defended the Cosimo thesis in a chapter 161

In the Halberdier debate, the issue of the painting’s date is inseparable from the question of the subject’s identity. The republican scenario would connect its origin to the period of the

Siege (in accordance with Vasari), placing it during the ten brutal months that began in October of 1529. In contrast, the Medicean interpretation implies a dating to nearly a decade later, in

1537-8, following the Battle of Montemurlo, in which the republican exiles were roundly defeated by Imperial and Medici troops.512 In either formulation, the Halberdier is a painting created in the context of a violent contest for control over the Florentine government.

Despite their differences, the two theories overlap on a few essential points, which, given the close affinity between the London and Getty pictures, are important to consider when examining the Young Man in a Red Cap. First, both sides find the Halberdier to be unquestionably militaristic, proudly displaying its subject’s adherence to a particular political ideology and his willingness to fight in its defense. Both date the work to a volatile period in the city’s history, relating the picture to a specific political conflict. They likewise concur in

entitled “Tiranno o Difensore della libertà? La Enigma dell’ ‘Alabardiere’,” in La bellezza impura, 123-154. In 2010, Costamagna sounded less certain, though still in support of the Cosimo identification, which he described as “seeming more plausible” (Costamagna, Un capolavoro del Rinascimento: Pontormo, Ritratto di Gentiluomo [Milan: Carlo Orsi, 2010], 13). Although in 2009 Janet Cox-Rearick described the Medicean theory as being “widely held,” and in 2014, as held by “the majority of scholars,” in fact, in the twenty-first century, she, Costamagna, and Pinelli, are some of the only remaining supporters of the theory. (Cox-Rearick, “Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici,” and Cox-Rearick, sales catalogue, Christie’s New York, “The Renaissance”). See note 509 above for recent examples of supporters of the Guardi thesis. The Halberdier question has captured public attention: a debate was recently waged in Rheumatology International between a group composed of clinicians and historians of medicine, who wished to prove the Halberdier to be Cosimo based on a pathology of the condition of Cosimo’s hand, whose evidence was then refuted by the leader of a team who excavated the Medici tombs in 20001. (Weisz GM, Albury WR, Lippi D, Matucci-Cerinic M (2011) Who was Pontormo’s Halberdier? The evidence form pathology. Rheumatol. Int. Doi 10.1007/s00296- 011-1898-7 [Published online 30 March 2011];

512 Pinelli, La bellezza impura, 124.

162 connecting the picture’s symbolic elements to a traditionally republican iconographic vocabulary, linking his pose to famous Florentine statues associated with the republic’s defense.513

Each side explains these characteristics as an exhibition of the sitter’s commitment to a republican Florence. Those who see the Halberdier as a depiction of Francesco Guardi understand these signs as a straightforward display of Guardi’s loyalty to the besieged last republic.514 Scholars who believe instead that the Halberdier represents Cosimo I view these republican symbols as an appropriative effort by the new duke to associate himself with the city’s traditional civic values: Cosimo poses as a republican guardsman, masking his new imperial principate as a return to the oligarchic republicanism of the fifteenth-century Medici.515

513 Anna Forlani Tempesti, Pontormo (Florence: Octavo, 1994), 139; Elizabeth Cropper, “Pontormo: Francesco Guardi as a Halberdier 1529-30,” (cat. entry) in Strehlke, ed. Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici, 92.

514 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 87.

515 Pinelli, La bellezza impura, 154; Costamagna, “Pontormo’s Lautenspieler,” 105. The idea that Cosimo, in the 1530s was already appropriating Davidian imagery is anachronistic. Henk Th. van Veen has argued that Cosimo’s use of republican imagery appears only in the latest stages of his rule, proposing that “the republican perspective was introduced into the visual propaganda from the moment Cosimo had consolidated his power, that is from 1560” (“Republicanism in the Visual Propaganda of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” JWCI, Vol. 55 (1992), pp. 200-209, p. 209). Van Veen connects Cosimo’s use of this specific political content to the Duke’s victory over Siena, and disagrees with the art historical studies by Cox-Rearick and Forster that find republican images earlier in his career. Edward Muir writes that the choice not to employ the figure of David during this period was part of a larger schema: “in 1530 the new Medicean principate abandoned the family’s old strategy of presenting themselves as first among equals and completely transformed the dynasty’s vocabulary for representing power. No longer did the Medici associate themselves with valiant and pious figures from the Bible: the Magi kneeling before the Christ child, David the slayer of Goliath, Judith the slayer of Holofernes. Instead they imitated the pagan ancients, especially the Roman emperors. Grand duke Cosimo adopted Hercules as a favoured emblem of the dynasty…” (Muir, “Representations of Power in Renaissance Italy”, in John M. Najemy, ed., Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550, Oxford University Press, 2004, [235-6]). Van Veen notes that up until the late 1560s, “David had hardly appeared at all in works commissioned by the Duke, let alone…any parallel drawn between him and the Old Testament king.” This is perhaps too strong a statement, since King David certainly appears in events and decorations before this point, although van Veen’s argument (about the relative paucity of Davidian images early in Cosimo’s reign) is useful. (van 163

In either case, the Halberdier is interpreted as a highly political image, created in direct response to contemporary events. With the discovery of the strikingly similar Portrait of a

Young Man in a Red Cap, the question arises as to whether the two portraits’ shared form necessarily implies shared ideological content.

II.

When Francis Russell first associated the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap with

Carlo Neroni, he offered little supporting evidence beyond the painting’s formal similarity to the

Halberdier, and their virtually identical dimensions. Within the portrait itself, the only confirmation he could find was the black and white clothing, which Russell read as an allusion to the Neroni family coat of arms.516 Carol Plazzotta of the National Gallery has since argued strongly in support of Russell’s proposal, finding that “numerous strands of evidence can now be marshaled to support [his] identification of the London portrait.”517

Plazzotta’s approach to the Carlo Neroni is formulated as an extension of Elizabeth

Cropper’s interpretation of the Halberdier. Plazzotta notes the widespread acceptance of

Cropper’s thesis, and, finding the London portrait to be stylistically comparable, concludes that the Carlo Neroni should be dated to the same period as the Halberdier and subject to a similar political interpretation.518 This method is persuasive because Cropper’s arguments are so well constructed, and the paintings so alike. Cropper presents persuasive stylistic grounds to justify

Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-Representation, 36). For the use of David in Cosimo’s festivities of 1549, see Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Translated and edited by Nicole Carew-Reid (Ontario: University of Toronto, 2008), 120.

516 Russell, “A Young Man in Black by Pontormo,” 677.

517 Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap,” 224.

518 Ibid.

164 her dating of the Halberdier to c. 1530, and, concomitantly, her identification of its sitter as

Francesco Guardi.519 Since Cropper dates the Halberdier to the period of the Siege, so too does

Plazzotta with the portrait in London, basing her chronology on a comparison to the Getty picture.520

Setting aside the impracticality of using a controversial painting like the Halberdier as a chronological signpost, the two paintings, while distractingly alike in composition, are not as similar in rendering as one might desire for proving an analogous dating based on style. The exuberant handling and unsteady energy of the vibrant Halberdier is smoothed to a controlled glow in the more polished Carlo Neroni, despite their obvious formal kinship. It is easier to understand a connection between the Halberdier and the brilliant colorism of Pontormo’s other works from the late 1520s (such as the frescoes) than between those works and the more restrained Carlo Neroni.521

The Carlo Neroni also lacks the more overt symbolic elements present in the Halberdier, although he retains the guardsman’s pose. Neroni is not dressed in republican garb, nor does he carry the pole arm. Where the Halberdier’s guardsman tightly grips his weapon, Neroni holds his letter loosely, allowing his hand to droop forward at the wrist. His red cap is similar to that worn by the young man at the Getty, but where a medallion of Hercules and Antaeus dangles

519 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 8, 53

520 Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap,” 224.

521 Even the supporters of the Cosimo I identification acknowledge the stylistic connection with the Capponi Chapel frescoes. See, for example, Cox-Rearick, “Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici,” and Forlani Tempesti, Pontormo, 139, who notes that one of the main objections to the Cosimo-as-Halberdier thesis is the stylistic relationship between the painting and Pontormo’s works in the Capponi Chapel, and the Carmignano Visitation, both dating to the 1520s. See Chart III and Chart IV in the illustrations.

165 from Guardi’s beret, Neroni’s is unadorned.522 And unlike the Halberdier, Neroni stands against an entirely formless background, with no murky battlements to summon thoughts of war.

Scholars on either side of the Halberdier debate have the subject’s stance, perhaps more than any of his assorted republican accoutrements, as expressive of the painting’s ideological nature.523 Addressing the viewer, posed with hand on hip, his figure is a formal reprise of fifteenth-century Florentine Davids by Donatello and Verrocchio. His presentation particularly recalls Donatello’s marble David [fig. 2.2]—a statue housed, since its confiscation from the

Medici, in the Palazzo della Signoria, seat of the republican government.524 By the late 1520s, regardless of Donatello’s original intent, his Davids, through their public treatment, had come to embody an explicitly anti-Medicean brand of republicanism.

Chapters Two and Three include lengthy discussions of Florentine devotion to that Old

Testament hero, and the reflection of this phenomenon in paintings by Pontormo and Bronzino.

Over the course of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Davids of Donatello and

Michelangelo accrued increasingly precise political resonance, as the statues were wielded as props in disputes over Florentine rule—intensifying their roles as partisan icons.

522 The story of Hercules’ defeat of Antaeus can be interpreted in the same manner as David’s destruction of Goliath, in which a giant’s advantages are overcome by a less mighty challenger. The flexibility of the myth, however, is noted by Cropper, who warns against reading the hat badge as unambiguously partisan. Nevertheless, she supports her republican reading of the Halberdier by drawing attention to the relationship of Pontormo’s Hercules and Antaeus to drawings by Michelangelo depicting the same struggling pair, intended for the pendant to his republican David in the Piazza della Signoria (Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 70-75). When the sculpture was finished by Bandinelli, the subject became Hercules and Cacus.

523 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 74, 75, 106; Forster, “Probleme um Pontormos Porträtmalerei”; Simon, “Bronzino’s Portraits of Cosimo I,” 179.

524 Cropper, ibid. See Chapter 2, page 70 above.

166

By recalling Donatello’s marble David, the Halberdier invokes the statue’s history and accrued meaning, not simply as a revered work of art, but as a physical object caught up in the contests between the Medici and their enemies. In Cropper’s analysis of the Halberdier, she explains the portrait’s dependence on Donatello by connecting the hero David to the young

Florentines charged with the city’s defense during the Siege.525 When Pontormo depicts Guardi in the pose of Donatello’s David, he invests his sitter’s form with a specifically anti-Medicean visual rhetoric, calculated to inspire the bella gioventù at the time of the Siege.

Even those scholars who have identified the Halberdier as a portrait of Duke Cosimo recognize the republican potency of the figure’s pose. Robert Simon has proposed that in the

Halberdier, Cosimo takes the stance of the famous Davids in order to “indicate continuity with the Florentine republic—and perhaps by so doing, to vitiate the significance of the figure as an anti-Medicean symbol.”526 That the anti-Medicean connotation of the figure would be so great as to require mitigation by the Duke speaks to the validity of treating the Halberdier’s pose as purposeful and recognizable.

Since the Carlo Neroni shares the Halberdier’s composition, it likewise exhibits this loaded Davidian reference. For Plazzotta, the correspondence in pose indicates equivalent ideological content. She discovers in the London portrait the same “famous civic symbols” that, in Cropper’s analysis, determine the meaning of the Getty picture: the pose of the Carlo Neroni is therefore an analogous demonstration of an equally forceful republican point of view.527 The

525 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 74, 75, 106

526 Simon, “Bronzino’s Portraits of Cosimo I,” 179. See also Forster, “Metaphors of Rule,” 84-5.

527 Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap,” 226. Plazzotta’s conclusions operate independently from any presumed act of artistic imitation, her interpretation relying upon a repurposing of Cropper’s approach, not upon the relationship between the two paintings.

167 composition itself is viewed as essentially republican in nature, regardless of the identification of the sitter.

III.

An analysis of Carlo Neroni’s physiognomy also supports a republican interpretation of his portrait. The young man in the London portrait has a distinctly different physiognomy from that of the Halberdier. Although his body retains the pose originating in Donatello’s David, his facial features are decidedly less delicate, less fine. The round face is gone, replaced by sharp angles exaggerated by the hard play of light. The firmly set jaw belongs to a man, rather than a child. The expressions too, are dissimilar. The Getty and London faces are both marked by an apprehensive quality, but the Carlo Neroni does not convey the same wide-eyed fearfulness.

This youth meets his adversary with defiance.

The interpretive model established by Cropper in her treatment of the Halberdier suggests that Pontormo’s depiction of Carlo’s face may be politically significant. Cropper has demonstrated that the features and expression of Pontormo’s Halberdier are indebted to

Donatello’s marble David.528 She treats this congruence in the same way as the figural quotation, affording it the ability to transmit political meaning. Summoning the rest of the image as evidence, Cropper concludes that, in the Halberdier, the physiognomic reference is again purposeful and intended to encourage a partisan reading of the portrait as a whole.529

In the Carlo Neroni, the features of another David make their appearance. Plazzotta recognizes his expression as that of Michelangelo’s marble David, and the juxtaposition is

528 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 86-7. (The faces are reproduced side-by-side on page 86.)

529 Cropper, ibid, 87: “The Halberdier becomes credible as a young man defending his Florentine heritage through a deliberately established ancestry in the youthful heroes of Donatello.”

168 persuasive [fig. 4.4]. The comparison is proposed in an offhand way, as Plazzotta chooses to focus on the figural likeness to Donatello’s marble and Verrocchio’s bronze sculptures.530 Yet the creased brow, compressed lips, and exaggerated sideways glance are decidedly like those of

Michelangelo’s young hero. The play of shadows in the Carlo Neroni seems designed to encourage the comparison. Pontormo uses dramatic lighting to heighten the emotive effect, drawing attention to flared nostrils, piercing eyes, and furrowed brows strongly reminiscent of the marble David’s scowl. The dark lines descending outward across the cheeks are repeated, as are the shadowy depressions framing the mouth and the defining lines of the protruding chin.

The proper right side of the young man’s face is brightly lit while the left is deeply shadowed, in a pattern that reproduces the circumstances of Michelangelo’s David when seen in situ, guarding the seat of the republican government.531 Writing about Michelangelo’s David,

Howard Hibbard has encouraged us to “think about the meaning of the statue and its site together.”532 Hibbard reminds his readers that “placed as it was before the seat of republican liberty, the gaze of the David, facing South, was a warning to hostile Rome and, most particularly in 1504, to the Medici, who were gathering forces for their eventual reconquest of the city in 1512.”533 With the Palazzo della Signora to his immediate east, the David’s southern-

530 Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap,” 224, 226. Plazzotta first discovers the spirit of Donatello’s Saint George, “that came to symbolize republican fortitude in the minds of Florentines, and which Vasari memorably described as encapsulating ‘the beauty of youth, its spirit and valour in arms, a proud and terrifying vivacity,’” before discussing the Davids, which she finds more closely related in composition.

531 Barolsky, “Machiavelli, Michelangelo and ‘David’,” 32. The Halberdier is also lit from the left, but the effect produced is a more diffuse glow, rather than the strong contrasts of light and shadows which define the features of the Carlo Neroni.

532 Howard Hibbard, Michelangelo (2nd ed.) (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 78

533 Ibid.

169 directed glare would nearly always have been seen lit from the west, with the left side of his face thrown into shadow. Something as ephemeral-seeming as shadows on marble would, in this case, have played a considerable role in shaping the defining features of the statue.

Pontormo is an artist particularly capable in the manipulation of light. In his decorative program in the Capponi Chapel at Santa Felicita, the artist’s manipulation of light and shade bears a significance that extends beyond the goals of illusionism. The painter’s careful adherence to the potentiality of natural light makes evident his incorporation of divine illumination: a single cloud hovers above the Pietà, its pillowy surface lit by an unexplained and inconsistent source. This deliberate incoherence converts the light itself into an iconographical element, “bestowed with multiple and interrelated symbolic meanings.”534 In Pontormo’s Carlo

Neroni, the painter’s use of light and shadow seems similarly charged.

For Florentines of the period, Michelangelo’s David would have been most familiar when viewed in western light analogous with the source in Pontormo’s Carlo Neroni because impressions of the David were necessarily formed through personal encounters, rather than mediated by artistic reproductions, since there were no prints made after the statue.535 In fact, very few cinquecento artists turned to Michelangelo’s David for inspiration of any kind, making the statue’s appearance in the Carlo Neroni and Bronzino’s mythological cover for Pontormo’s

Halberdier all the more exceptional.

Of Michelangelo’s sculptural works in Florence, it was the San Lorenzo tomb figures that, in the words of Claus Virch, “became the key words in the vocabulary of forms used by [his]

534 Jack Wasserman, “Pontormo in the Capponi Chapel in Santa Felicita in Florence,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 53, no. 1 (2009): 35-72, 55.

535 Raphael Rosenberg, “The reproduction and publication of Michelangelo’s Sacristy: drawings and prints by Franco, Salviati, Naldini and Corti,” in Ames-Lewis and Joannides, eds., Reactions to the Master: 114-135 (126).

170 followers.”536 Raphael Rosenberg has pointed out the disparity between the large number of extant reproductions after the Medici tomb and those few after the David, noting that “of all of

Michelangelo’s sculptural works, the figures in the New Sacristy from the very beginning attracted the largest number of copyists.”537 While sixteenth-century copy-drawings after the

San Lorenzo tomb survive in more than twenty different hands, and there are a dozen different artists’ copies after the sculptures of the Julius Tomb, Rosenberg could only identify two sheets copied directly from the David.538 This discrepancy may relate to the relative inoffensiveness of replicating the tomb figures in a city under Medici control. And the avoidance of

Michelangelo’s David might in turn be attributed to the highly controversial nature of the statue, especially during the first half of the century, when Medici rule was tenuously maintained.

While it is impossible to know with how much accuracy Pontormo’s Getty and London portraits capture the physical likenesses of their subjects, comparisons with the Davids of

Donatello and Michelangelo indicate an intentional physiognomic reiteration of notorious and provocative works of art. 539 Such manipulation—the careful alteration of a subject’s features in order to conjure the image of an entirely different person—is in evidence elsewhere in the period.

It is apparent, for example, when Bronzino infuses his Portrait of Laura Battiferri with the

536 Claus Virch, “A Study by Tintoretto after Michelangelo,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15, no. 4 (Dec., 1956): 111-116, 111. In the same way that Rosenberg draws attention to the disproportionate number of drawings after the San Lorenzo sculptures, Virch draws attention to the large number of plaster casts.

537 Rosenberg, “The reproduction and publication of Michelangelo’s Sacristy,” 114.

538 Rosenberg, op.cit., 132, n. 2. On the dearth of sculptural imitations after the David, see Paul Joannides and Francis Ames-Lewis in the introduction to Reactions to the Master, 7.

539 On the relative desirability of reproducing actual physical appearances versus ideal traits and attributes in Renaissance portraiture, see Joanna Woods-Marsden, “‘Ritratto al Naturale’: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits” in Art Journal 46, No. 3, Portraits: the Limitations of Likeness (Autumn, 1987); 209-216.

171 character of Dante [fig. 4.5]. Bronzino presents Battiferri in an antiquated mode designed to recall famous portraits of Dante, and refashions her facial features in order to emphasize the two poets’ intellectual sympathy. The physical resemblance functions as a mechanism through which their kindred characters are conveyed.540

If Pontormo indeed modeled his Carlo Neroni’s appearance after Michelangelo’s David, the allusion should be read as a deliberate attempt to endow the young man with the statue’s heroic qualities, which relate precisely to the protection of the Florentine republic against the tyranny of its Medicean enemies. In Renaissance Florence, the exterior appearance of the body was considered a reflection of the inner workings of the soul—the features of the face thought to correspond to the topographies of the mind. David Summers has traced this period interest in physiognomy in Michelangelo’s art, arguing that the David’s mien is a calculated arrangement of features understood to convey boldness and bravery.

Of particular significance is the “cloudy brow,” an attribute of audacity recorded in classical and renaissance treatises, such as Cesare Ripa’s 1593 iconographic dictionary, the

Iconologia.541 Summers writes that a deliberate use of the clouded brow would be in keeping with Michelangelo’s project as a whole, because “if the David’s famous scowl does indeed

540 The Laura Battiferri is dated to the 1550s and housed in the Uffizi. Carol Plazzotta, “Bronzino’s Laura,” The Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1141 (Apr., 1998): 251-263, esp. 257, in which she compares Laura’s depiction to Bronzino’s drawing of Dante (c. 1532, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich). She deems Laura’s profile “the formal equivalent of the literary pun on the page; it carries a double meaning, at once describing Laura’s physical appearance and associating her with the vernacular tradition.” On the archaism of the portrait format, see Graham Smith, who states that “Bronzino’s selection of the profile form was to draw attention to Battiferri’s Dantesque features and, thereby, to represent her as a female equivalent to Dante.” (Smith, “Bronzino’s ‘Portrait of Laura Battiferri,’” in Source: Notes in the History of Art 15, no. 4 [Summer 1996]: 30-38, 32.) On her physiognomy, see also Pilliod, “The Life of Bronzino,” in Bambach, The Drawings of Bronzino: 3-10, 6; Cropper, “Reading Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” in Natali-Falciani, Bronzino: Painter and Poet, 248.

541 Summers, “David’s Scowl,” 84.

172 signify audacia, then it completes, animates, and directs the image of courage and boldness stated in the rest of the figure.”542 Summers directs our attention to Ripa’s allegory of Audacia, in which he defines the trait as “the vice of those who little consider the difficulty of some great act, and presuming too much of their own powers, believe that they will easily attain their end.

Therefore it is shown by a youth who tries by his strength to knock a firmly set column to the ground.”543

Republican rhetoric, as we have seen, applauded David’s disregard for the improbability of his eventual victory, holding him up as a model for Florentine young men. Gravely outmatched in his contest against Goliath, the shepherd’s daring was not censured as a failing, but lauded as proof of his unwavering religious faith. The previous chapter showed how this devotional language was employed by the republic as inspiration for young soldiers, urging them to take heart, as David had, when confronted with their enemies’ superior military force.

Summers cites Ripa’s Iconologia to explain a few lines jotted by Michelangelo alongside his drawn studies of David, words that allude to the audacity of both the subject and the artist.

The sculptor quotes from a sonnet by Petrarch: “Rocte alta Colonna e’l verd (Broken is the high column and the green [laurel]),” which Michelangelo follows with an addendum of his own:

“Davicte cholla fromba e io col larcho. Michelagniolo (David with his sling and I with my bow.

Michelangelo).”544 The link, for Summers, is the artist’s own skill. He writes, “as David conquered Goliath with a sling, so Michelangelo will overcome seemingly insuperable

542 Ibid., 83.

543 Ibid., 84.

544 Summers, “David’s Scowl,” 84.

173 difficulties with the tools of his art.”545 The quality of audacity—signaled by a furrowed brow— benefits the warrior as well as the artist, which Summers illustrates with the scowling face of

Giorgione’s Self-portrait as David, and Pliny’s characterization of ancient colossi, (fashioned when the art of sculpture was at its zenith) as “audaciae.”546

In the case of the Carlo Neroni, Pontormo turns to Michelangelo’s David not solely for its style or composition, but for the audacity of its content.547 At any point in the decade beginning with the Siege of Florence, Pontormo’s allusion to Michelangelo’s audacious David would have been daring in its own right, evocative of the city’s republican troops. The David’s appearance in Bronzino’s Pygmalion and Galatea moreover establishes a definite connection between Michelangelo’s statue and Pontormo’s portraits of the Carlo Neroni type. In the case of the allegorical cover, the David’s presence alludes to the partisan feelings of the young man depicted in Pontormo’s Halberdier. In the London portrait, the repetition of the scowl is a similarly calculated artistic act.

IV.

In Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni, the subject’s formal dependence on these famous Florentine Davids can be understood as a deliberate republican statement—a reading consistent with Neroni’s biography. His personal history suggests that, were there to be any political ideology evident in his portrait, it would certainly be republican.

545 Ibid.

546 Ibid.

547 Pontormo’s personal and professional esteem for Michelangelo is well documented. Elizabeth Pilliod has traced the ways in which Vasari’s characterization of Pontormo as a “follower of Michelangelo” was “not simply rhetorical, but practical.” Pilliod, “The Influence of Michelangelo, 36.

174

When Carlo di Francesco Maria di Dietisalvi Neroni was born in Florence in 1511, he most likely inherited a grudge. Fifty years earlier, the Neroni family had been prominent and powerful allies of Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici, first citizen of the oligarchic republic.548 After

Cosimo’s death in 1464, relations between the Medici and Neroni quickly soured, particularly as the Medici consolidated their control over the city.549 Just two years later, in 1466, Dietisalvi

Neroni attempted to stage a coup, acting with the purported goal of restoring a truly republican government. Dietisalvi was banished, and several of his family members were exiled for further efforts to limit Medici power. The Neroni and their descendants were declared rebels and their property confiscated. Carlo’s father Francesco was only two years old at the time, but was nevertheless sentenced to twenty years in exile. He returned to Florence in the 1490s, when the

Medici were expelled.550 The Neroni would never recapture their earlier wealth and status, and it is easy to imagine that the young Carlo felt keenly the decline of his family and viewed with bitterness their treatment at the hands of the Medici.

Carlo Neroni was born in the final year of Piero Soderini’s republic. The following year, in 1512, after nearly two decades in exile, the Medici returned to power. In 1527 they were expelled from the city once more, when Florentine republicans again asserted their city’s independence from hereditary rule.

In Vasari’s vita of Pontormo, we encounter Neroni as a patron of Pontormo in 1529-30, during the Siege. It was at that time, according to Vasari, that Carlo Neroni commissioned a

548 For a history of the Neroni family, see Paola Benigni, “Appunti per la Storia di un Palazzo Fiorentino,” in P. Benigni, ed., Palazzo Neroni a Firenze: Storia, Architettura, Restauro (Florence: Edifir, 1996), 2.

549 Nicolai Rubinstein, Il Governo di Firenze sotto i Medici (1434-1494) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1971), 165-210.

550 Benigni, “Appunti per la Storia,” 13.

175 copy of Pontormo’s brutal Martyrdom of Ten Thousand, both versions painted while Florence was besieged [fig. 4.6]. The original panel was carried out by Pontormo for a children’s orphanage, the Spedale degli Innocenti.551 The copy for Neroni is now attributed to Bronzino, and can be likened stylistically to his Pygmalion and Galatea [fig. 4.7].552

Pontormo’s original Martyrdom of Ten Thousand, examined in the context of the Siege, appears to be a bald excoriation of imperial brutality.553 Though the busy narrative panel is very different from the other paintings treated in this dissertation, it repeats a familiar republican theme: the overmatched in war promised salvation through faith.554 As treated by Pontormo and

Bronzino in the panels for the Spedale and Carlo Neroni, the biblical story is straightforward in its censure of violence committed at the hands of a tyrant.

The legend concerns an army of nine thousand soldiers, who, with their commander

Achatius, were sent by the Roman emperors Hadrian and Antoninus into battle against a much larger force. When an angel appeared to Achatius promising victory in exchange for Christian faith, all nine thousand men converted. Following the next day’s triumph, Achatius and his men were led to the top of Mount Ararat, where a host of angels provided instruction in their new faith. The emperors, displeased, assembled a massive army to destroy the Christians. Achatius

551 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 275.

552 Vasari, ibid. For Bronzino’s authorship, see, for example, Costamagna, Pontormo, 133, 210; Antonio Natali, “Agnolo Bronzino’s Early Years,” 48-9, and 55n.; Forlani Tempesti, Pontormo, 133.

553 The subject of the painting, previously misidentified, was first correctly linked to the legend of St Achatius by Howard S. Merritt, “The Legend of St. Achatius: Bachiacca, Perino, Pontormo,” The Art Bulletin 45, no. 3 (Sep., 1963); 258-263. For a recent bibliography of Pontormo’s Martyrdom, see Bastian Eclercy, Pontormo: Meisterwerke Des Manierismus in Florenz (Hannover: Landesmuseum, 2013), 31; Sefy Hendler, “Ten Thousand Martyrs,” (catalogue entry) in Natali and Falciani, Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, 290.

554 Merritt, “The Legend of St. Achatius,” 259.

176 and his men were tortured but miraculously withstood their trials, inspiring another thousand troops to convert. These ten thousand were then subjected to more torture—in forms resembling the injuries inflicted upon Christ—and baptized in their own blood. The new Christians did not repent despite their suffering, and were finally sent to Mount Ararat to be crucified.555

The links connecting the tale as depicted by Pontormo and Bronzino to the Florentine context of the Siege are multiple and have been widely explored.556 Pontormo reinforces the specifically Florentine impression of the battle by including figures and vignettes from

Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascina and Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari—the two republican commissions at the Palazzo della Signoria.557

These Florentine references are preserved in Bronzino’s copy of the Ten Thousand

Martyrs commissioned by Carlo Neroni. Indeed, in Neroni’s version, the action is set more explicitly outside the walls of Florence: the city is visible behind a background hill. This element reinforces the evident allegorical content—condemning the violence of Siege and the

Medicean tyrants, and comparing the beleaguered republicans (who had formally elected Jesus

Christ as their king) to the Christian soldiers martyred on Mount Ararat.558 Neroni’s copy of the

Ten Thousand Martyrs is a bitter reflection on the Florentine condition during the Siege.

555 Merritt, “Legend of St. Achatius,” 259.

556 Simone Giordani in Natali-Falciani, Bronzino: Painter and Poet, cat. nos. I.13 and I.14, 78- 81. For the connection to the Siege, see especially Giordani, 78; Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 56; Eclercy, Pontormo: Meisterwerke, 31; Hendler, “Ten Thousand Martyrs,” 290.

557 Natali-Cecchi, Officina della Maniera, 82-4. There is also a quotation taken from Masaccio’s frescoes at the , and in Pontormo’s original version, the figure of a tyrant directing the martyrdom takes his pose from Michelangelo’s San Lorenzo tomb sculptures. See also Hendler, “Ten Thousand Martyrs,” 290.

558 Plazzotta writes that the “undisguised allusions to the bloody sacrifices of the siege […] is further testament to [Neroni’s] patriotic sentiments” (Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap”).

177

In the past, Carlo Neroni has occasionally been characterized as a Medici partisan.559

This assumption was based on his role, some twenty years after the fall of the republic, as a government functionary in the service of Duke Cosimo.560 Although it took the duke nearly two decades to put an end to the open aggression from the fuorusciti and their supporters, many former republicans had renounced their anti-Medicean ties long before Cosimo’s decisive victory over Piero Strozzi in 1554.561 Varchi, for example, returned to Florence to begin his career at

Cosimo’s court in 1543, only 6 years after composing verses in celebration of Duke Alessandro’s murder.562 Varchi’s change in allegiance does not alter the tenor of his earlier anti-Medicean writings, nor should Carlo Neroni’s later reconciliation preclude a republican reading of his portrait. Neroni’s family history, his commission of the especially Florentine Ten Thousand

Martyrs, and the Davidian imagery in his portrait all strongly support a republican reading of that that portrait.563

559 Carl Strehlke, “Pontormo, Alessandro de’ Medici, and the Palazzo Pazzi,” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 81, no. 348 (1985): 3-15, 15 n. 38.; Forlani Tempesti, Pontormo, 131- 133.

560 For Neroni’s ducal service, see ASF, Mediceo del Principato, filza 206, cc. 35r, 39r, as cited in Simoncelli, “Pontormo e la cultura fiorentina,” Archivio storico italiano 153 (1995); 487-527, 500 n. 51.

561 Piero’s French support failed him at the Sienese Battle of Marciano in 1554. On the continued opposition from the fuorusciti after Cosimo’s installation, see Simoncelli, “Florentine Fuorusciti at the Time of Bindo Altoviti,” in Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano, and Dimitrios Zikos eds., Raphael, Cellini, and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003): 285-328.

562 See page 154, note 494, above.

563 No publications from the discovery of the portrait have been concerned by Neroni’s later service to the duke. Plazzotta, for example, declares simply that “Neroni, like Guardi, was a Republican sympathizer” (Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap,” 226).

178

V.

In the Portrait of Carlo Neroni, the young man holds a folded letter to his chest, the paper bearing writing that has, until now, been considered largely unintelligible.564 Once deciphered, this inscription not only provides support for the sitter’s identification, but also suggests a new dating of the picture.

The inscription, together with a thin ring decorating Neroni’s left hand, seems to relate the portrait’s commission to a matrimonial event. The opening letters can be read as an address to a woman: “Domi[na].”565 Plazzotta has proposed that these epithalamic elements connect the painting to Carlo Neroni’s 1530 wedding to Caterina di Giuliano Capponi.566 The bride came from a family with strong ties to anti-Medicean politics and Savonarolan reform: she was the niece of Niccolò Capponi, head of the Florentine government during the last republic.567 Dating the Carlo Neroni to the circumstances of Carlo and Caterina’s wedding fits well with the portrait’s belligerent republican tone—appropriate during the Siege—and with the Carlo

Neroni’s formal connection to the similarly dated Halberdier. Since the Carlo Neroni’s rediscovery in 2008, this dating has been uniformly accepted.568

564 Plazzotta, “Portrait of Young Man in a Red Cap,” 224.

565 “Domi[…] n[i] / ul e […] elli.” Plazzotta, Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap, 224.

566 Caterina di Giuliano Capponi was a niece of Niccolò Capponi, then supervising the Florentine government as the last republic’s Gonfaloniere (Plazzotta, “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap, 224).

567 Ibid., 226.

568 Even Costamagna, an adamant supporter of the Cosimo-as-Halberdier hypothesis, has revised his chronology of Pontormo’s portraits to accommodate the Carlo Neroni as a republican picture dating to c. 1530 (Costamagna, “Pontormo’s Lautenspieler”).

179

The inscription need not, however, necessarily refer to Carlo’s wedding to Caterina

Capponi. Carlo Neroni was married twice: in 1539, he wed Elisabetta di Luigi Martelli.569 And in fact, on the sheet Neroni holds in his portrait, below the address, are letters that may refer to this second marriage: first is the letter e (for “Elisabetta”), then an obscuring finger, closely followed by “elli,” the last four letters of “Martelli.”

If we accept that the young man in the London painting is Carlo Neroni, it seems hardly likely that this arrangement of letters, displaying the first and final characters of his second wife’s name, should appear in his portrait by chance. It would seem even less likely that his portrait, if commissioned on the occasion of his first marriage in 1530, should coincidentally contain them. It seems reasonable, therefore, to consider whether the London portrait, understood as a depiction of Carlo Neroni, might in fact date to c. 1538-1539, and not to ten years earlier.

Neroni’s age does not present a serious obstacle to this revision: the later dating would make Carlo twenty-eight years old in his portrait, which his features allow. And Vasari’s statement regarding the Carlo Neroni is ambiguous in its wording, offering little real information as to the date of its completion.570 Vasari appends his mention of Carlo’s portrait to the

569 ASF Carte Strozziane, Quinta Serie, 1475, f 178r.

570 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite VI, 275: “Un altro quadro simile al sopradetto fece a Carlo Neroni, ma con la battaglia de’ Martiri sola, e l’Angelo che gli battezza; ed apresso, il ritratto di esso Carlo. Ritrasse similmente, nel tempo dell’assedio di Fiorenza, Francesco Guardi in abito di soldato, che fu opera bellissima.” The dating of Pontormo’s Martyrdom to c. 1529-30 is widely accepted and corroborated by comparison with the artist’s other paintings from the period.

180 discussion of the Martyrdom—described as a worked carried out during the Siege—but the

Neroni’s exact chronological relationship to the Francesco Guardi is left unclear.571

This new dating of the Carlo Neroni separates the portrait from the Halberdier by a full decade. This division may account for the difference in handling noted above, with the vibrant colorism of the Halberdier contrasted with the taut energy of the Carlo Neroni.572 Rather than placing the Carlo Neroni close to the Halberdier and the other paintings from the late 1520s to which Halberdier seems related [CHART III], this dating would link the Neroni to portraits like

Pontormo’s Portrait of a Bishop and Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book, datable to the early

1540s [figs. 4.8, 4.9, and CHART IV].573 These two paintings are closely related, sharing compositional elements as well as qualities of technique and style.574 When the two pictures were exhibited together in 2014, Antonio Geremicca noted that Pontormo, in his last portraits,

571 As Geremicca writes, “Vasari tended to described portraits in groups, paying little attention to chronology” (“Portrait of a Bishop (Monsignor Niccolò Ardinghelli?” in Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, 136, no. iv.i.5).

572 Besides the Capponi Chapel frescoes, the Carmignano Visitation, and the Uffizi Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist datable to the period of the Siege, it is also very difficult to imagine the Carlo Neroni having been carried out soon after Pontormo’s early Portrait of a Young Man in Pink (Lucca c. 1525), whose vibrating brushstrokes depict a young man with soft, slightly apprehensive features much more easily related to the Halberdier than the Neroni (see Geremicca, “Portrait of a Young Man,” in Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, 134, no. iv.i.4).

573 Geremicca has recently reidentifed the subject of the Portrait of a Bishop, formerly identified as Giovanni della Casa, as Monsignor Niccolò Ardinghelli. This change does not change the accepted dating of c. 1541-2 (for example, Strehlke, “Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici,” 146- 8, no. 45). The Gentleman with a Book is dated to c. 1542 (Geremicca, “Gentleman with a Book, 138).

574 Geremicca, “Portrait of a Bishop,” 136; Berti, Pontormo, CLXVI. Costamagna, Ritratto di Gentiluomo.

181

“moved towards rediscovered simplicity, a visual and moral ensemble that returned to a monochromatic background and looser poses.”575

Though the Carlo Neroni retains the Halberdier’s pose, it has much in common with these later portraits. As in the Portrait of a Bishop and Gentleman with a Book, the more muted colors of the Carlo Neroni draw attention to the pale skin of the subject’s hands, standing out as important points of interest in the image. In the Halberdier, the hands are upstaged by layers of ruffled white fabric. In the Carlo Neroni, the suppleness of the wrists and the soft articulation of bones and ligaments on the backs of the hands is much like that in the later portraits, and dissimilar to the crooked, jagged lines of the young soldier’s fingers. The Portrait of a

Gentleman with a Book may be partly unfinished, yet it seems to offer a compelling comparison with the Carlo Neroni.576 The anonymous gentleman is similarly dressed in a black tunic over a white shirt, the proper left sleeve of which is bent into a billowing shape much Neroni’s. On both, the highlights, rendered in black, white, and silvery grey, are bold and smooth, built by long strokes of color—very different from the short, crinkling folds that describe the sleeve of the Halberdier.

That the Halberdier and Carlo Neroni result from a shared cartoon—as is implied by their close resemblance—should not be mistaken for proof of a shared date. While the reuse of a cartoon after such a long period may seem impractical, there is evidence of the practice occurring elsewhere in Pontormo’s oeuvre. As Janet Cox-Rearick’s research has demonstrated, some

575 Geremicca, “Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book,” 138, no. iv.i.6.

576 For the Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book, see Geremicca, ibid., and Costamagna, Ritratto di gentiluomo.

182 drawings remained in the artist’s studio for years before being used or reused by Pontormo and

Bronzino.577

In the case of the Ten Thousand Martyrs, Pontormo’s design was composed nearly a decade before the two versions by Pontormo and Bronzino were carried out. The composition originated in the early 1520s, intended for a fresco commissioned by the Compagnia dei

Diecimila Martiri, a project abandoned shortly thereafter.578 Later, at the time of the Siege, the composition was repurposed for the two Martyrdom panels.579 Ezio Buzzegoli and Diane

Kunzelman have examined Pontormo’s original cartoon in relation to the under-drawings of the two Martyrdoms. 580 In a manner consistent with the studio practice of Pontormo’s teacher

Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Bronzino began by first making precise copies of the cartoon with neat charcoal outlines. They then elaborated their compositions, freely making alterations

577 Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo, and, specifically on the Martyrdom, see entry no. 195, in vol. I, 210-212. See also Cox-Rearick and Westerman Bulgarella, “Public and Private Portraits,”127- 9.

578 On the commission and dating, see Alessandro Cecchi, “Gli anni fiorentini di Pierino,” in Piero del Vaga, Giuliano Algeri, ed. (Milan: Electa, 2001), 37-50.

579 Simone Giordani in Natali-Falciani, Bronzino: Painter and Poet, 78. Fabian Jonietz, “Die Scuole delle arti als Orte der Aemulatio: der Fall der Cappella Brancacci,” in Aemulatio: Kulturen des Wettstreits in Text und Bild (1450-1620): 769-812, 798-801.

580 The drawing is a Compositional study for a lunette with Victory & Baptism of the 10,000 Martyrs, red chalk on paper, 42 x 36.7cm, Hamburg, Kunsthalle n. 21253. Ezio Buzzegoli and Diane Kunzelman, “Re-use of Cartoons on Paintings by and Pontormo: A Study with High Resolution Digital Scanned IRR,” in La peinture ancienne et ses procédes: copies, répliques, pastiches, edited by H. Verougtraete et al (Le Colloque XV pour l’étude des oeuvres d’art par les méthodes scientifiques, U.C.L), (Leuven: Peeters, 2006): 67-78.

183 in paint. It seems likely that a similar process characterized Pontormo’s reuse of the Halberdier cartoon for his Portrait of Carlo Neroni.581

Redating the Carlo Neroni to the late 1530s need not jeopardize the highly politicized interpretation of the portrait set forward in this chapter. When considering Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, Neroni’s brother-in-law, I have argued that the inclusion of a Donatellesque statue of David signals the young man’s republican partisanship, even seven years after the last republic’s defeat.582 It seems that in the portrait of Carlo Neroni, painted perhaps a year after the

Ugolino Martelli, the figural and physiognomic references to the Davids of Donatello and

Michelangelo are similarly potent.

In 1537, Alessandro’s murder had revived hopes for the restoration of the republic, hopes that were dampened, but not quelled by the defeat at Montemurlo.583 Painted in 1538-9, the

Carlo Neroni does not display the political marks—like the costume, weapon, and hat badge— that allude to the Halberdier’s partisanship, and which might, at this later date, expose painter and patron to retribution from the Medici. Instead, Pontormo pictures Neroni as the bold

Davidian hero, his daring nature encoded within his appearance. The later dating implied by the inscription does not alter the portrait’s republican content, conveyed by means of the figure itself.

581 On this topic, see also Carmen Bambach, “Bronzino, Young Man with a Book,” in Bambach, The Drawings of Bronzino, (cat. no. V.4), and images of radiography on pages 45-6; Costamagna, Pontormo, 242; Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 104.

582 The family relationship connecting Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli to Pontormo’s Carlo Neroni has not been mentioned before.

583 Though the first years of Cosimo’s rule saw a distinct consolidation of Medici power, his early reign was still plagued by instability. Diaz notes that especially in 1537-43, there was still much doubt as to whether Cosimo’s regime might be able to overcome the threat of republican insurrection (Diaz, Il Gran Ducato, 78).

184

Rather, dating the portrait to a period of Medici control gives greater meaning to the young man’s Davidian audacity, as he dares to challenge established ducal rule.

VI.

This later dating of Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni has important implications for two other Florentine portraits, also closely related to the Halberdier. In the past, before the

Carlo Neroni came to light, these two unidentified portraits were grouped together with the eighteenth-century engraving after the Carlo Neroni, and all three classified as later variants of the Halberdier. New findings about the Carlo Neroni encourage reconsideration of these portraits as well.

The Portrait of Carlo Neroni is the closest to the Halberdier.584 Nevertheless,

Bronzino’s Young Man with a Book at the Metropolitan Museum and a Portrait of a Young Man in Black formerly in the Piasecka Johnson Collection are also quite similar to the Getty picture

[figs. 4.10, 4.11].585 Like the Carlo Neroni, both fall within a few centimeters of the Halberdier, and their protagonists adopt the familiar Davidian pose.586 X-radiography shows that the

Metropolitan portrait was once even closer to the Halberdier, before being reworked by

Bronzino [fig. 4.12]. The Piasecka Johnson picture is in poor condition, complicating questions

584 Halberdier: oil on panel transferred to canvas, 92x72 cm.; Neroni, oil on panel, 92.1 x 73 cm

585 For the Bronzino portrait see Bambach et al., The Drawings of Bronzino, cat. no. V.4. The Piasecka Johnson collection was auctioned by Sotheby’s in London on 8 July, 2009, with the portrait described the “Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” by Pontormo. The sales catalogue was written by Janet Cox-Rearick, and she is also responsible for the sales material for the painting’s most recent sale, by Christies in New York on 29 January 2014, where it was given the same title. Cropper likewise attributes the painting to Pontormo (Portrait of a Halberdier, 100-106, esp. 103). See also Cropper, “Preparing to Finish,” 181.

586 The Metropolitan portrait (oil on panel) is 95.6cm x 74.9cm, and the Piasecka Johnson portrait (tempera on panel) is the largest at 100.9cm x 77cm. See Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 104-5; Bambach et al., The Drawings of Bronzino, 44-5 (figs. 8 and 9), 47.

185 of attribution. In the early twentieth century, the work was given to Bronzino or his workshop, with the latter attribution upheld by Berti in 1990.587 In general, however, the more recent studies—including Cropper, Costamagna, and Cox-Rearick—have favored Pontormo as its author.588 The proportions, as Cropper notes, are more in line with Pontormo’s elongated figures.

The connection to Bronzino is nevertheless easy to understand in light of the similarity between the architectural setting in the Piasecka Johnson portrait, and the spaces in which Ugolino

Martelli and the Metropolitan Young Man with a Book appear.

While bound by their common resemblance to the Halberdier, the Young Man in Black and Young Man with a Book are simultaneously characterized by an unrelated likeness to one another, particularly noticeable in the architectural setting. In both portraits the airless interior is rendered in grey-blue tones, and segmented into multiple overlapping elements punctuated by pietra serena accents. This type of background calls to mind Bronzino’s Ugolino Martelli, with its tight juxtaposition of disjointed Florentine architectural motifs. Other similarities of palette, gesture, and clothing link Pontormo’s Young Man in Black and Bronzino’s Young Man with a

Book. Both men are finely dressed in black, and each drapes the elongated fingers of his right hand into the pages of a book.

Each of the portraits is datable to the 1530s. Because the Metropolitan Young Man with a book is accepted as a work by to Bronzino, that portrait’s similarity to the Ugolino Martelli has

587 It was sold twice as a work by Bronzino, in 1915 and 1930. For a complete bibliography up to 1994, see Forlani Tempesti and Giovannetti, Pontormo, 142. Berti, “L’Alabardiere di Pontormo,” 46.

588 Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 102. Due to the poor condition, Cropper warns particularly against the use of the face as a means to identify the artist, but argues that “its format and especially its innovative low viewpoint and architectural setting indicate Pontormo’s authorship” (ibid., 103). Costamagna (Pontormo, no.79) and Cox-Rearick (“The Influence of Pontormo’s Portrait”) have seen in the portrait a depiction of Cosimo I newly come to power.

186 guided its dating, placing the Young Man in the mid- to late- 1530s, around the same time as

Ugolino’s portrait.589 The poor condition of the Piasecka Johnson Young Man in Black complicates its dating, but due to its closeness to Bronzino’s paintings from the later 1530s, it is also usually dated to the final years of the decade, and no later than 1540-41.590

Long before Russell’s discovery of the Carlo Neroni, these portraits of unidentified young men were drawn into the Halberdier debate. For supporters of the Cosimo-as-Halberdier thesis, the three known variants of the Halberdier—the Metropolitan and Piasecka Johnson portraits, together with the missing Carlo Neroni (as recorded by 1759 engraving)—were understood as portrayals of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici.591 Scholars including Kurt Forster, Janet

Cox-Rearick, Philippe Costamagna, and Antonio Pinelli have described these multiple reiterations of the Halberdier’s composition as meeting a need for images of the new ruler.592

The fact that the Metropolitan and Piasecka Johnson portraits are datable to the 1530s has been taken as further proof that the Halberdier is a portrait of Duke Cosimo, commissioned

589 Bambach, ed., The Drawings of Bronzino, 47 (c.1534-1538). Costamagna, Pontormo, 244; Costamagna, Pontormo, Ritratto di Gentiluomo, 18 (c.1539). Cox-Rearick, “A Portrait of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici by Pontormo” (Christie’s sale, 2014).

590 On the painting’s poor condition, see Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 103. The later dating comes from Forster, who attributes the painting to Bronzino’s workshop (“Probleme um Pontormos Porträtmalerei”). Cox-Rearick dates the painting to immediately after Cosimo’s election, in c. 1537-8. In this, she follows Costamagna, whose proposal that this painting is “in all probability that sent to Naples for presentation to [Cosimo’s] fiancée, Eleonora di Toledo, in advance of their nuptials. In this instance, the present portrait might have been displayed in the palace of the Viceroy of Naples on occasion of their proxy wedding” (Cox-Rearick, Christie’s sale, 2014). There is no evidence that such a present ever existed, and the hypothesis is based entirely upon speculation on Costamagna’s part. See Cropper, ibid.

591 See, for example, Cox-Rearick’s review of Costamagna’s Pontormo monograph (The Burlington Magazine 139, no. 1127 [Feb., 1997]: 127-128.

592 Forster, “Metaphors of Rule,” 72; Cox-Rearick, “A Portrait of Duke Cosimo” (2014); Costamagna, Pontormo, 245; Pinelli, La bellezza impura, 129. See also Cropper, Portrait of a Halberdier, 103

187 during the very first years of his reign. When the Piasecka Johnson collection was auctioned in

2009, Pontormo’s Young Man in Black was sold as the Portrait of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, and the painting returned to auction in January of 2014 under the same name.593 For proponents of the Medicean interpretation, the repetition of the Halberdier’s pose is seen as a deliberate political statement—meaningful in each reiteration, reinforcing Cosimo’s appropriation of traditional republican imagery.594

In Elizabeth Cropper’s effective rebuttal of the Cosimo-as-Halberdier theory, the later variants of the Halberdier are treated as politically neutral works of art—neither republican nor

Medicean in sentiment. For Cropper, the Halberdier’s Davidian pose is meant to convey

Francesco Guardi’s republican partisanship—perfectly appropriate in a painting dating to the period of the Siege. But since the Young Man in Black and Young Man with a Book seem to have been painted several years after the republic’s defeat, in their cases, Cropper argues that the recognizable Davidian pose has lost its potency as republican symbol. She attributes the later portraits’ repetition of the Halberdier’s composition to the sitters’ appreciation for the

Halberdier’s artistic merit, not its political content.595

The present study of Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli and Pontormo’s Portrait of

Carlo Neroni conflicts with each of these approaches. In the previous chapter, it was shown that

Davidian imagery was employed as means of signaling republican partisanship well into Duke

593 Both catalogue essays were provided by Cox-Rearick. Sotheby’s, London, 8 July, 2009, Lot 15; Christie’s, New York, 29 January, 2014, Lot 166.

594 See particularly Costamagna, Pontormo, 244-5.

595 For example, in the case of the Carlo Neroni (when it was known through the Gerini inventory engraving) Cropper writes: “Among Neri di Francesco Guardi’s gambling crowd was one Galeazzo Gerini, and it is tempting to imagine that the Gerinis knew the Guardi portrait, commissioning something similar from one of Bronzino’s pupils” (Portrait of a Halberdier, 109).

188

Cosimo’s reign; this fact supports a republican interpretation of both the Halberdier and the

Carlo Neroni, without dictating the Neroni’s date. Examination of the portrait, Neroni’s biography, and the history of Davidian imagery in the cinquecento supports a partisan reading of

Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni, even when dated to the end of the 1530s.

In the case of Bronzino’s Young Man with a Book and Pontormo’s Young Man in Black, the repetition of the Halberdier’s pose should be considered as potentially indicative of republican sentiment—regardless of date. These might not be republican images, but their origin in the 1530s does not in itself preclude such a reading.596 With the Halberdier, the Young Man with a Book, the Young Man in Black, and the Carlo Neroni, we can compare four portraits that share a common composition, but not necessarily a common date. This extraordinary circumstance draws attention to the exaggerated role often played by the fall of the last republic in determining modern responses to cinquecento works of art. Perhaps the most important question raised by the rediscovery of Pontormo’s Portrait of Carlo Neroni is whether the traditional division of Florentine portraiture into two periods—republican and Medicean—is still valid.

596 This reading contradicts statements such as that by Kurt Forster, who writes that the portraits of Cosimo I by Pontormo and Bronzino “illustrate the increasing internalization of political content because the political and social structures of Tuscany were not so thoroughly transformed that the new implications of Cosimo’s reign could be expressed without the aid of difficult symbols” (“Metaphors of Rule,” 72). See Chapter 3 for my arguments against this approach to the 1530s.

189

CONCLUSION

On March 29th, 1539, Cosimo I de’ Medici and Eleonora di Toledo were married by proxy in Naples, where the bride’s father served as Spanish viceroy.597 The new duchess arrived in Florence three months later, on the 29th of June, occasioning lavish celebrations that lasted throughout the month of July.598 A wedding banquet was held in a courtyard at the Palazzo

Medici on July 6, and several artists, including Bronzino, contributed decorations for the event.

The courtyard was lined with paintings depicting significant events in the family’s history: along one wall were six scenes from the lives of Cosimo’s Medicean antecedents, opposite were six corresponding scenes from the life of the duke himself.599 Bronzino painted the final picture in each group, and according to Vasari, these scenes surpassed all the others.600 They caught the

597 Acting in Cosimo’s stead were Jacopo de’ Medici and Luigi Ridolfi (for Luigi, see page 125, note 387 above). Cosimo had hoped to marry Alessandro’s widow, Margaret of Austria, a daughter of Charles V. Don Pedro di Toledo, however, was also able to provide the duke with a significant imperial connection (Andrew C. Minor and Bonner Mitchell, A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539 [Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1968, 17]). For accounts, see, for example, Adriani, Istoria dei suoi tempi, 105; Segni, Storie fiorentine, vol 2., book 9, 573.

598 A contemporary account of the festivities is provided by Pierfrancesco Giambullari, Apparato et feste nelle noze dello illustrissimo Signor Duca di Firenze, & della Duchessa Sua Consorte, con lesue Stanze, Madriali, Comedia, & Intermedij, in quelle recitati (Florence: Giunti, 1539). The ducal entry on June 29th appears on page 5.

599 The decorations were made under the direction of Tribolo, and the artists included Bronzino, Pier Francesco di Sandro, Francesco Bacchiacca, Domenico Conti, Antonio di Domenico, and the Venetian Battista Franco. Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 88. Minor and Mitchell, A Renaissance Entertainment, 74. All of the paintings are lost.

600 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 445: “Nell’ultimo di tutti questi quadri erano le nozze del medesimo duca Cosimo fatte in Napoli […] e questa, che era di mano del Bronzino, era fatta con tanta grazia, che superò, come la prima, tutte l’altre storie.” Both of Bronzino’s scenes were set 190 attention of the duke, who, recognizing Bronzino’s artistic virtù, offered Bronzino his first commission as court painter—a role he would occupy for the next twenty-five years.601

Evidence presented in this dissertation suggests that before the start of his tenure as court painter, Bronzino produced paintings expressive of equivocal sentiment towards the new ducal establishment. But if the artist personally harbored anti-Medicean inclinations, or if, in 1539,

Cosimo or his agents had any misgivings about Bronzino’s loyalties, there is no record of reluctance on the part of either the duke or the painter in beginning this new relationship. In fact, in the first years of the duchy, it was not uncommon for artists to move between republican and

Medicean patrons.602 Dukes Cosimo and Alessandro sought out artists known to have provided works for their republican enemies, and many of the city’s artists seem to have welcomed commissions without reference to a potential patron’s political ideology.603

in Naples. On the eastern wall was Duke Alessandro confronted by the fuorusciti before Charles V in the winter of 1535—what Giambullari describes as “the many difficulties of Duke Alessandro in Naples, with the firm opposition of his powerful adversaries” (Minor and Mitchell, A Renaissance Entertainment, 132). The final scene on the western wall was Bronzino’s depiction of Cosimo and Eleonora’s wedding by proxy (ibid., 135).

601 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 596: “che tutte furono le migliori pitture che fussero fatte in quell’apparato: là dove il duca, conosciuta la virtù di quest’uomo, gli fece metter mano a fare nel suo ducal palazzo una cappella non molto grande per la detta signora duchessa.” Beginning in 1540, Bronzino (together with Bacchiacca and Tribolo) is recorded receiving a court salary (Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, 17). In 1564, Vasari supplanted Bronzino on the court payrolls (Firpo, “Bronzino and the Medici,” 92).

602 See, for example, the discussions of Bronzino, Pontormo, Francesco Salviati, and , below.

603 The most famous exception is Michelangelo, who, although pardoned for his participation in the defense of the last republic during the Siege, left Florence for good in 1534. Cosimo never stopped trying to lure the artist back from Rome. The duke had to settle for the artist’s posthumous return, with Michelangelo’s funeral held in Florence in 1564. On Michelangelo’s partisanship, see de Tolnay, “Michelangelo’s Political Opinions.”

191

Bronzino never worked independently for Duke Alessandro, but the painter collaborated on Medicean projects throughout the 1530s. 604 His return to Florence in 1532 was undertaken, according to Vasari, expressly in order to help Pontormo complete the fresco program for the

Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, begun in the 1520s.605 In the following years, he assisted his former teacher at two other : Careggi in 1535-6, and, in 1537-43, at Castello.606

The villa campaigns overlap with republican projects discussed in this dissertation, making it impossible to divide Bronzino’s work of the 1530s into periods of strictly republican and Medicean patronage. Shortly after the painter’s return in 1532 to aid Pontormo at Poggio a

Caiano, the two artists began the chamber decorations for the outspoken republican Bartolomeo

Bettini. The frescoes at Careggi followed almost immediately thereafter. Bronzino’s Allegorical

Portrait of Dante for Bettini—legible as an expression of dissatisfaction with the contemporary

Medici government—is thus bookended by Medici commissions. Likewise, the Portrait of

Ugolino Martelli must have been painted around the same time that work commenced at Castello,

604 In the early 1530s, besides the Portrait of Duke Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Bronzino painted portraits of Andrea Doria and “a daughter of Matteo Sofferoni.” (Vasari [Milanesi], Vite, VII, 595.) Bronzino’s only independent commission from the ducal establishment came from Giovanni de’ Statis, auditore to Duke Alessandro, for whom he painted a small Madonna (Vasari [Milanesi], Vite, VII, 595). Although officially linked to Alessandro’s government, de’ Statis is a complex figure: he served as vicario generale to Niccolò Ridolfi during Ridolfi’s tenure as Archbishop of Florence (before Ridolfi resigned in 1532), and de’ Statis was not selected by Alessandro, but instead by Clement VII, who sent de’ Statis from Rome to be the incompetent duke’s advisor (Varchi (Milanesi), Storia Fiorentina, vol. II, 446). Varchi describes de’ Statis as “knowing and loving many in Florence, and therefore [as having been] known and loved by many in turn” (Idem, op. cit., 419). Bronzino’s other patrons discussed by Vasari before the ducal wedding include Bartolomeo Bettini, Bonaccorso Pinadori, Ugolino Martelli, Lorenzo Lenzi, Pier Antonio Bandini and his wife, Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife, Matteo Strozzi, Filippo d’ Averardo Salviati, and Francesco Montevarchi. (Vasari [Milanesi], Vite, VII, 595-6.)

605 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 276, and VII, 595.

606 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 596; Brock, Bronzino, 52; Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, 17.

192 since Vasari says that Cosimo commissioned the frescoes following his victory at Montemurlo, in August of 1537.607 Apparently, Bronzino was able to move between republican and Medicean projects with ease.

These shifts seem to demonstrate not only the painter’s flexibility, but also that of his

Medici patrons. Although the Ugolino Martelli and Allegorical Portrait of Dante may be subtle in their censure of the ducal government, there was no confusion over Bettini’s loyalties, and

Bronzino’s participation in a project like the chamber decorations would not have gone unnoticed.608 In the early years of the duchy, however, the dukes welcomed Florentine artists known to have served their republican opponents. The painter Pier Francesco Foschi, for example, joined Bronzino at Careggi and participated in creating decorations for the wedding, despite having previously worked for Cosimo’s opponents in Rome.609 Another painter,

Francesco Salviati, fled to Rome in 1531, and adopted the surname of his patron, Cardinal

Giovanni Salviati, one of Cosimo’s most important fuorusciti antagonists. In his name,

Francesco openly bore the mark of his loyalty to the Cardinal, yet the painter nevertheless returned to Florence under Cosimo to work with Bronzino first on the wedding decorations, and later at the ducal court.610

607 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 71, 281-2.

608 For Bettini, see pages 129-130 above.

609 Pilliod, “Representation, Misrepresentation, and Non-Representation: Vasari and His Competitors,” in Phillip Jacks, ed., Vasari’s Florence: Artists and Literati at the Medicean Court (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998): 30-54 (257 n. 30). Idem, “‘In Tempore Poenitentiae’: Pierfrancesco Foschi’s Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Pucci,” The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1026 (Sep., 1988): 679-687.

610 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VII, 11. Salviati was involved in the paintings for the banquet at Palazzo Medici in 1539, but left before his scene was completed (Ibid, 17). He is recorded as a recipient of a court salary in 1542 (Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, 17). On Salviati, see 193

Both Cosimo and Alessandro were eager to secure works by the city’s best artists—to exclude those who had served their republican opponents would have deprived the new rulers of

Florence’s premier talent. Moreover it seems likely that the decision to employ artists previously engaged in republican projects may have been a tactical choice on the part of the new dukes, who hoped to present themselves as a continuation of, rather than a break from the city’s republican history. In the 1530s, the dukes’ most powerful opponents were members of the city’s traditional oligarchic aristocracy—their own peers and family-members (the Salviati, Ridolfi,

Neroni, Strozzi, Martelli, Pucci, Antinori, etc.)—a privileged class who saw Alessandro and

Cosimo as undeserving outsiders. In their campaign to win Florentine support, the dukes sought not to distinguish themselves from their opponents, but to reassure them of their equality, as peers and representatives of the Florentine elite.611

Duke Alessandro’s patronage of Pontormo might be understood in this light. During the last republic, Pontormo had carried out prominent civic works for the republican government: his altarpiece for the convent of Sant’Anna in Verzaia—a religious painting endowed with overtly ideological content—was commissioned by the Signoria in commemoration of a republican political anniversary.612 Under Alessandro, Pontormo reprised this public role:

Elizabeth Pilliod has shown that during the 1530s, as a salaried court artist under Alessandro and

Monbeig-Goguel, ed., Francesco Salviati. On his court career, see Cox-Rearick, “Friendly Rivals.”

611 On the dukes’ need to ingratiate themselves with the Florentine elite, see, for example, Minor and Mitchell, A Renaissance Entertainment, 18-19.

612 The altarpiece was commissioned by the republican government for the celebration of the feast day of Saint Anne, the anniversary of the city’s expulsion of the duke of Athens—a republican victory over a tyrant positioned as an allegory of the last republic’s rejection of the sixteenth-century Medici. See Strehlke, “Pontormo, Alessandro de’ Medici, and the Palazzo Pazzi,” 15, n. 36.

194

Cosimo, Pontormo was engaged as “something like the official painter of the city.” 613 It seems that rather than discouraging Duke Alessandro from employing the artist, Pontormo’s previous association with republican patrons may perhaps have been viewed as a desirable quality.

In 1534, after completing the chamber decorations for Bartolomeo Bettini, Pontormo was commissioned to paint his Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici [fig. 5.1]. Vasari explains that Alessandro’s desire to be portrayed by Pontormo was inspired by the artist’s depiction of

Amerigo Antinori. Alessandro was eager to enlist Pontormo, Vasari writes, because the Amerigo

Antinori was widely praised, and because the subject was personally very popular—a young man

“much esteemed at the time in Florence.”614 Antinori was an anti-Medicean who may have already been exiled in 1531, and who would later be taken prisoner at Montemurlo in 1537.615

Alessandro’s greatest challenge was his own personal unpopularity, and it probably appealed to the duke to have himself portrayed by the author of a greatly admired portrait of a well-liked young man. Unlike Vasari’s contemporaneous portrait of Alessandro as an aloof ruler clad in armor [fig. 5.2], Pontormo’s Alessandro presents the duke as an artist and intellectual; as Carl

Strehlke has explained, the portrait is conceived in the same manner as the several letterati

613 Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, 32.

614 Vasari (Milanesi), Vite, VI, 278: “Avendo Iacopo, dopo le già dette opera, ritratti di natural in un quadro Amerigo Antinori, giovane allora molto favorito in Fiorenza, ed essendo quel ritratto molto lodato da ognuno, il duca Alessandro avendo fatto intendere a Iacopo che voleva da lui essere ritratto in un quadro grande.”

615 Antinori appears, along with Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, Filippo Strozzi, Jacopo Nardi, and others, on a list of anti-Medicean rebels dated 23 June, 1536 (ASF, Otto di Guardia e Balìa, 13, ‘Partiti e Deliberazioni,’ 45v-46r, with Antinori listed on 46r). After being exiled in 1531, Amerigo was captured at the Battle of Montemurlo in 1537. See Giovanna Naldi, Rossella Carrus, and Valentina Tofani, eds., Futuro Antico. Storia della Famiglia Antinori e del suo Palazzo (Florence: Alinari, 2007), 78, and Simoncelli, Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 332. On the Portrait of Duke Alessandro, see Strehlke, “Pontormo, Alessandro de’ Medici, and the Palazzo Pazzi,” 3-5, and Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino and the Medici, 85.

195 portraits of Pontormo and Bronzino, precisely because the duke hoped to reassure the artistic and literary elite that he was one of their own.616

Pontormo was an active court artist in the 1530s, consistently employed by both dukes.617

Yet Vasari describes the painter as reluctant to undertake his Medici commissions.618 Some scholars have interpreted this hesitance as a sign of Pontormo’s personal political beliefs— supported by the evidence of his compelling republican pictures painted in the late 1520s.619

After 1539, Bronzino superseded Pontormo in his role as court painter; his later Medicean pictures have in turn been used to argue that Bronzino’s loyalty to the dukes is absolute— precluding the possibility of his having painted any republican images in the 1530s.620

Such generalizations impose too rigid a formula on a period of deep political uncertainty.

During the tumultuous decade beginning with the Siege of Florence, Pontormo and Bronzino each created both republican and Medicean images. The notorious difficulty faced by modern scholars in interpreting portraits from the period may be to some extent explained by the fact that whereas the Medici hoped to win supporters by aligning themselves visually with their opponents, the republicans necessarily camouflaged their dissent in imagery acceptable to the

Medici establishment. The portraits seem designed, at least in part, to deceive.

616 Strehkle, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici, 85.

617 Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, 12.

618 Ibid., 14.

619 Forster, “Metaphors of Rule,” 101.

620 Firpo, “Bronzino e i Medici.”

196

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1.1 Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, c. 1529-30. Oil on panel, 81 x 63 cm, Uffizi.

197

Figure 1.2 Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi), c.1529-30. Oil on wood, transferred to canvas, 92 x 72 cm, Getty.

198

Figure 1.3 Pontormo, Study for St. Francis, c.1518-21. Black chalk heightened with white, Galleria degli Uffizi [6744F recto].

Figure 1.4 Pontormo, Venus and Cupid, c. 1515. Red chalk. Galleria degli Uffizi [341F].

199

Figure 1.5 Piero di Cosimo, Venus, Mars, and Cupid, c. 1505. Oil on panel, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

Figure 1.6 Marco Zoppo, Venus Victrix, c. 1465-74(?). Pen and brown ink on vellum, British Museum.

200

Figure 1.7 Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, details.

Figure 1.8. Dante, Divine Comedy (Paradiso VIII). Fourteenth-century manuscript illumination with Dante and Beatrice conversing, Venus, Taurus, and Libra. Bodleian Library.

201

Figure 1.9 Angelo Poliziano, Stanze di messer Angelo Poliziano incominciate per le giostre di Giuliano de’ Medici, anonymous woodcut illustration. Florentine edition, 1494. (Reprinted in Dempsey, “Portraits and Masks,” 36.)

202

Figure 1.10 Titian, Jacopo Pesaro being presented by Pope Alexander VI to Saint Peter, c. 1503-12. Oil on canvas, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

203

Figure 2.1 Michelangelo, David, with image flipped on vertical axis, c. 1504. Marble, Florence, Accademia.

Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Donatello, David, c. 1408-9. Donatello, David, c. 1435-40. Marble, Bargello. Bronze, Bargello.

204

Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Copy after Michelangelo, David, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio(?), Portrait of a Condottiero, Piazza della Signora. Oil on wood, 70 x 51.5 cm, c. 1510. NGL.

Figure 2.5 (detail)

205

Figure 2.6 Vasari, Triumphal Entry of Leo X, 1558-62. Fresco, Sala di Leone X, Palazzo Vecchio.

Figure 2.7 Vasari, Reception of the Insignia of Command, detail, 1558-62. Fresco, Sala di Leone X, Palazzo Vecchio.

206

Figure 2.8 Stradanus, Piazza del Mercato Vecchio. Fresco, Palazzo Vecchio, c.1562-72.

Figure 2.9 Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, c.1478. Tempera on panel, Uffizi.

207

Figure 2.10 Giambologna (after Niccolò Tribolo), Venus-Fiorenza Fountain, c.1560-70. Villa la Petraia.

Figure 2.11 Bronzino, Primavera (Venus-Fiorenza), 1545-6. Tapestry, Palazzo Pitti.

208

Figure 2.12 Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Young Man, c.1545. Oil on panel, 40.25 x 32.5 cm, St. Louis Art Museum.

Figure 2.12 detail.

209

Figure 3.1 Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, c.1537. Oil on wood, 102 x 85 cm, Gemäldegalerie Berlin.

210

Figure 3.2 Antonio Rossellino(?) David, 1461/79. Marble, 164.6 x 50.4 x 42.4 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Figure 3.3 Bronzino, Ugolino Martelli, detail.

211

Figure 3.4 Bronzino, Allegorical Portrait of Dante, c.1532-3. Oil on canvas, Florence, private collection.

212

Figure 3.5 Bronzino, Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, 1527-8 or 1532-4. Oil on wood, 98 x 73 cm, Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

213

Figure 3.6 Hans Burgkmair, Genealogy of Maximilian I (Hector), woodcut, 1508-12.

Figure 3.7 Michelangelo, Brutus, c. 1539. Marble, Museo del Bargello.

214

Figure 4.1 Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni), c. 1529-30 or c.1538-9? Oil on panel, 92.1 x 73 cm, National Gallery London.

215

Figure 4.2 Violante Vanni, after Lorenzo Lorenzi. Portrait of a Young Man. In Raccolta di ottanta Stampe rappresentanti i Quadri più scelte de’ Signori Marchesi Gerini, 1759.

Figure 4.3 Comparison: Pontormo, Carlo Neroni and Portrait of Francesco Guardi.

216

Figure 4.4. Comparison: Michelangelo, David and Pontormo, Carlo Neroni.

Figure 4.5 Bronzino, Portrait of Laura Battiferri, c. 1558. Oil on wood, Palazzo Vecchio; Bronzino, Dante, c. 1532. Black chalk, Munich.

217

Figure 4.6 Pontormo, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand, 1529-30. Oil on wood, 65 x 73 cm, Palazzo Pitti.

Figure 4.7 Bronzino, Martyrdom of Ten Thousand (and detail), 1529-3. Oil on wood, 64 x 45 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi.

218

Figure 4.8 Pontormo, Portrait of a Bishop (Giovanni della Casa? Niccolò Ardinghelli?), c. 1541-2. Oil on wood, 102 x 89.0 cm, National Gallery, Washington.

219

Figure 4.9 Pontormo, Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book, c. 1542. Oil on wood, 88.2 x 71.5 cm, private collection.

220

Figure 4.10 Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, c.1534-8. Oil on wood, 95.6 x 74.9 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

221

Figure 4.11 Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in Black, c.1538. Oil or oil and tempera on wood, 100.9 x 77 cm. Formerly in the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection, sold Christie’s, 29 January 2014.

222

Figure 4.12 Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, c. 1534-38. Oil on wood, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Underdrawing and underpainting in infrared reflectography (Infrared reflectogram, Sherman Fairchild Conservation Center, MMA. In Bambach, ed. Bronzino, 44.)

223

Figure 5.1 Pontormo, Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, 1534-5. Oil on wood, 101.3 x 81.9 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 5.2 Vasari, Portrait of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, 157 x 114 cm, 1534. Oil on wood, Galleria degli Uffizi.

224

CHART I: Bronzino, c. 1527-37.

a. b. c.

d. e. f.

g. a. Lorenzo Lenzi b. Guidobaldo della Rovere c. Metropolitan Young Man d. Lyric Poet e. Bartolomeo Panciatichi f. Ugolino Martelli g. Allegorical Portrait of Dante

225

CHART II: Pontormo and Bronzino, c. 1529-39

a. b.

c. d. e.

a. Pontormo, Halberdier. b. Pontormo, Carlo Neroni. c. Bronzino, Metropolitan Young Man with a Book, Infrared reflectogram. d. Bronzino, Metropolitan Young Man with a Book. d. Pontormo, Young Man in Black.

226

CHART III: Pontormo, c. 1525-30.

a. b.

c. d.

1. Pontormo, Halberdier. 2. Pontormo, Visitation, c.1528-9. Oil on wood, Carmignano. 3. Pontormo, Madonna and Child with Infant St. John, c. 1528. Oil on wood, Uffizi. 4. Pontormo, Portrait of Young Man, c. 1525, Lucca.

227

CHART IV: Pontormo c. 1538-42.

a. b.

c. d.

a. Pontormo, Carlo Neroni. b. Pontormo, Portrait of a Bishop. c. Pontormo, Young Man in Black. d. Pontormo, Portrait of a Gentleman with a Book.

228

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript Sources Florence. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF) Mediceo del Principato 473A, ff. 552r-553r. Mediceo del Principato 3039, Decifrati di un Amico Segreto di Venezia, f. 31v. Carte Strozziane, I Serie, 95, f.105r. Carte Strozziane, I Serie, 95, ff. 30-33r. Carte Strozziane, I Serie, 132, f. 86v. Carte Strozziane, V Serie, 1473, f..160r. Carte Strozziane, V Serie, 1474, f. 50r. Carte Strozziane, V serie, 1475, f. 26r. Carte Strozziane, V Serie, 1475, f. 178r. Carte Strozziane, V Serie,1482, f. 49v. Otto di Guardia e Balìa, 13, ‘Partiti e Deliberazioni,’ ff. 45v-46r. Otto di Guardia, Repubblica 129, fols. 38r-39r.

Florence. Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze (BNF) Magl. VII, 730, f.15-16v.

Printed Sources

Ackerman, James S. “Imitation.” In Antiquity and Its Interpreters, edited by Alina Payne, Ann Kuttner, and Rebekah Smick, 9-16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Ademollo, Agostino. Marietta de’ Ricci, ovvero, Firenze al tempo dell’assedio: racconto storico di Agostino Ademollo, edited by Luigi Passerini. 2nd edition, 6 vols. Florence: Chiari, 1845.

Adriani, Giovan Batista. Istoria de’ suoi tempi di Giovambatista Adriani gentilhuomo fiorentino. Divisa in libri ventidue. Di nuovo mandata in luce. Con li sommarii, e tavole delle cose più notabili. Venice: Giunti, 1587.

Ahern, Marie L. "David, the Military Exemplum." In The David Myth in Western Literature, edited by Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik, 106-119. West Lafayette, IA: Purdue Research Foundation, 1980. Albèri, Eugenio, ed. L’assedio di Firenze illustrato con inediti documenti. Florence: Clio, 1840. Albertini, Rudolf von. Firenze dalla repubblica al principato. Storia e coscienza politica. Turin: Einaudi, 1970.

229

Alighieri, Dante. Purgatorio. Translated by Charles Singleton. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. ———. Paradiso. Translated by H. W. Longfellow. Boston-New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1886.

Ames-Lewis, Francis, and Paul Joannides, eds. Reactions to the Master: Michelangelo's Effect on Art and Artists in the Sixteenth Century. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Anzilotti, Antonio. La Crisi Costituzionale Della Repubblica Fiorentina. Florence: Successori B. Seeber, 1912. Askew, Pamela. “Perino del Vaga’s Decorations for the Palazzo Doria Genoa.” Burlington Magazine 98, no. 635 (Feb., 1956): 46-53. Aste, Richard. “Bartolomeo Bettini e la decorazione della sua ‘camera’ fiorentina / Bartolomeo Bettini and his Florentine “Chamber Decoration.” In Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova belleza ideale / Venus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty, edited by Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz Nelson, 3-25. Florence: Galleria dell’Accademia, 2002. Exhibition catalogue. Baker, Nicholas Scott. "For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480–1560." Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2009): 444-78. ———. “From a Civic World to a Court Society: Culture, Class, and Politics in Renaissance Florence, 1480-1550.” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2007. ———. The Fruit of Liberty: Political Culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1550. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. ———. “Power and Passion in Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Sexual and Political Reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’ Medici.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no.3 (Sept., 2010): 432-457. ———. "Writing the Wrongs of the Past: Vengeance, Humanism, and the Assassination of Alessandro De' Medici." The Sixteenth Century Journal 38, no. 2 (2007): 307-27. Bambach, Carmen (ed.), Janet Cox-Rearick, George R. Goldner. The Drawings of Bronzino. With Philippe Costamagna, Marzia Faietti and Elizabeth Pilliod. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010. Exhibition Catalogue. Bareggi, Claudia di Filippo. "In nota alla politica culturale di Cosimo I: l'Accademia Fiorentina." Quaderni Storici 23 (1973): 527-74. Barocchi, Paola. Trattati d'arte del Cinquecento, fra manierismo e controriforma. 3 vols. Bari: Laterza, 1960. Barolsky, Paul. "As in Ovid, So in Renaissance Art." Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 2 (1998): 451-74. ———. "Botticelli's Golden Goddess." Source: Notes in the History of Art 32, no. 2 (2013): 4-5.

230

———. "Botticelli's "Primavera" and the Poetic Imagination of Italian Renaissance Art." Arion 8, no. 2 (2000): 5-35. ———. "Botticelli's ‘Primavera’ as an Allegory of Its Own Creation." Source: Notes in the History of Art 13, no. 3 (1994): 14-19. ———. "Bronzino Fictions." Source: Notes in the History of Art 25, no. 2 (2006): 23-25. ———. "Florentine Metamorphoses of Ovid." Arion 6, no. 1 (1998): 9-31. ———. "Looking at Venus: A Brief History of Erotic Art." Arion 7, no. 2 (Fall, 1999): 93-117. ———. "Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and ‘David’." Source: Notes in the History of Art 23, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 32-33. ———. Michelangelo's Nose: A Myth and Its Maker. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. ———. "Vasari's Literary Artifice and the Triumph of Michelangelo's David." In The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari, edited by David J. Cast, 121-128. London: Ashgate, 2014. Baron, Hans. The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1955. ———. In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the transition from Medieval to Modern Thought. 2 vols. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP,1988. Bauer, Douglas F. "The Function of Pygmalion in the Metamorphoses of Ovid." Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 93 (1962): 1-21. Bayley, C. C. War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The “De Militia" of Leonardo Bruni. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961. Benigni, Paola, ed. Palazzo Neroni a Firenze: Storia, Architettura, Restauro. Florence: Edifir, 1996. Berger, Harry. "Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture." Representations 46 (Spring 1994): 87-120. Bergstein, Mary. "Marian Politics in Quattrocento Florence: The Renewed Dedication of Santa Maria Del Fiore in 1412." Renaissance Quarterly 44, no. 4 (1991): 673-719. Berner, Samuel. "The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to Principato, 1530- 1609." Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature 9 (1972): 3-15. ———. "Florentine Political Thought in the Late Cinquecento." Il pensiero politico: rivista di storia delle idee politiche e sociali 3 (1970): 177-99. ———. "Florentine Society in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries." Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971): 203-46.

231

Berti, Luciano. "L' ‘Alabardiere’ del Pontormo." Critica d'arte, 55 (1990): 39-49. ———. “Michelangelo and the Florentine Painting of the Sixteenth Century.” In Around the David: The Great Art of Michelangelo’s Century. Edited by Franca Falletti and Magnolia Scudieri, 28-73. Florence: Giunti, 2003. ———. L’opera completa di Pontormo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1973. ———. Pontormo. Florence: Edizioni d’arte Il Fiorino, 1966. ———. Pontormo e il suo tempo. Florence: Le Lettere, 1993. Bettini, Maurizio. The Portrait of the Lover. Translated by Laura Gibbs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Beuzelin, Cécile. "Jacopo Pontormo: A Scholarly Craftsman." In The Artist as Reader: On Education and Non-Education of Early Modern Artists, edited by Heiko Damm, Michael Thimann and Claus Zittel, 71-104. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Beyer, Andreas. Portraits: A History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003. Bloch, Eileen. “Erasmus and the Froben Press: the Making of an Editor.” The Library Quarterly 35, no. 2 (Apr., 1965): 109-120, 119. Blühm, Andreas. Pygmalion: Die Ikonographie Eines ünstlermythos wischen 1 und 19 . New York: P. Lang, 1988. Bornstein, Daniel E., and David S. Peterson, eds. Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy: Essays in Honour of John M. Najemy. Toronto: Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008. Borsook, Eve. “Art and Politics at the Medici Court I: The Funeral of Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 12, 1/2 (Dec., 1965), 31-54. Bosch, Lynette M. F. "Time, Truth & Destiny: Some Iconographical Themes in Bronzino's 'Primavera' and 'Giustizia'." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 27, no. 1 (1983): 73-82. Boter, Gerard. The Textual Tradition of Plato’s Republic. Leiden: Brill, 1989. Bottari, G. G., R. A. Martini, and T. Buonaventura, eds., Prose Fiorentine dello Smarrito Accademico della Crusca. 4 vols. Florence: Stamperia di Sua Altezza Reale, 1719. Bramanti, Vanni. "Ritratto di Ugolino Martelli (1519-1592).” Schede umanistiche: rivista semestrale dell' Archivio Umanistico Rinascimentale Bolognese 2 (1999): 5-54. ———. "Ugolino Martelli." In Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 71. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2008. ———. Ugolino Martelli, Lettere a Pier Vettori 1536-1577. Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2009.

232

Bredekamp, Horst. Sandro Botticelli, La Primavera: Florenz als Garten der Venus. Frankfurt Am Main: Fischer, 1988. Brock, Maurice. Bronzino. Translated by David Poole Radzinowicz and Christine Schultz- Touge. Paris: Flammarion, 2002. ———. "Le Portrait d' Ugolino Martelli par Bronzino: un Homère florentin?" In Homère à la Renaissance: Mythe et transfigurations, edited by Luisa Capodieci and Philip Ford, 323-44. Rome: Académie de France à Rome, 2011. Brown, Alison. “De-masking Renaissance Republicanism.” In Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited by James Hankins, 179-99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ———. "Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social and Political Context of Renaissance Florence." I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 9 (2001): 11-62. ———. Medicean and Savonarolan Florence. The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. ———. The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power. Florence: Olschki, 1992. ———. The Renaissance. Seminar Studies in History. London: Longman, 1988. ———. The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010. Brucker, Gene A. The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. ———. Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1387. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962. ———. Renaissance Florence. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

Brotton, Jerry. “Carthage and Tunis, The Tempest and Tapestries.” In The Tempest and Its Travels, edited by Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman, 132-7. Philadelphia; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Bullard, Melissa Meriam. "Adumbrations of Power and the Politics of Appearances in Medicean Florence." Renaissance Studies 12, no. 3 (1998): 341-56. ———. Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome. 2nd edition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ———. "Marriage Politics and the Family in Florence: The Strozzi-Medici Alliance of 1508." The American Historical Review 84, no. 3 (June 1979): 668-87. ———. "L'ultimo straordinario capitolo del repubblicanesimo Fiorentino 1494-1530." In Politica e cultura nelle repubbliche italiane dal Medioevo all'età moderna: Firenze, Lucca,

233

Siena, Venezia, edited by Simonetta Adorni Braccesi and Mario Ascheri, 135-55. Rome: Instituto storico italiano per l’età moderna e contemporanea, 2001. Buonarroti, Michelangelo, and Gaetano Milanesi. Le lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti pubblicate coi ricordi ed i contratti artistici. Edited by Gaetano Milanesi. Florence: Le Monnier, 1875. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Mineola, New York: Dover, 2010. Burroughs, Charles. "The Altar and the City: Botticelli's ‘Mannerism’ and the Reform of Sacred Art." Artibus et Historiae 18, no. 36 (1997): 9-40. Bush, Virginia L. "Bandinelli's ‘Hercules and Cacus’ and Florentine Traditions." Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 35 (1980): 163-206. Busini, Giovanni Battista. “Letter to Benedetto Varchi.” In Opere di Benedetto Varchi, ora per la prima volta raccolte…aggiuntevi delle lettere di Gio. Battista Busini sopra l’assedio di Firenze. 2 vols. Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1858-9. ———. Lettere di Gio. Batista Busini a Benedetto Varchi sugli avenimenti dell’assedio di Firenze: estratte da un codice della Bibliotheca Palatina. Pisa: Capurro, 1822. Butterfield, Andrew. “New Evidence for the Iconography of David in Quattrocento Florence.” I Tatti Studies 6 (1995), 116-117. Butters, H. C. Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth Century Florence, 1502-1519. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. ———. “Piero Soderini and the Golden Age.” Italian Studies 33 (1978): 56-71. Buzzegoli, Ezio and Diane Kunzelman. “Re-use of Cartoons on Paintings by Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo: A Study with High Resolution Digital Scanned IRR.” In La peinture ancienne et ses procédes: copies, répliques, pastiches, edited by H. Verougstraete, et. al., 67-78. Leuven: Peeters, 2006. Byatt, Lucinda. “‘Una suprema magnificenza,’ Niccolò Ridolfi. A Florentine Cardinal in Sixteenth-Century Rome.” Ph.D. diss., European University Florence, 1983. Caglioti, Francesco. Donatello e i Medici: Storia del David e della Giuditta. 2 vols. Florence: Olschki, 2000. Calafati, Marco. "Sulle orme di un Bronzino: Firenze, Berlino, Ottawa. Ritratto di Simone da Firenzuola?" Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 48, no. 1/2 (2004): 268-84. Campbell, Lorne, ed. Renaissance Faces: from Van Eyck to Titian. With Miguel Falomir, Jennifer Fletcher, and Luke Syson. London, National Portrait Gallery, 1999-2000; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008.

234

Campbell, Stephen J. "Bronzino, Aemulatio Und Die Liebe." In Aemulatio: Kulturen des Wettstreits in Text und Bild (1450-1620), edited by Jan-Dirk Müller, Ulrich Pfisterer, Anna Kathrin Bleuler, and Fabian Jonietz, 193-230. Göttingen: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. ———. "Counter Reformation Polemic and Mannerist Counter-Aesthetics: Bronzino's ‘Martyrdom of St. Lawrence’ in San Lorenzo." RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 46 (2004): 98-119. ———. "Pietro Bembo e il ritratto del Rinascimento." In Pietro Bembo e l'invenzione del Rinascimento, edited by Davide Gasparotto, Guido Beltramini, and Adolfo Tura, 84-90. Venice: Marsilio, 2013. Cantagalli, Roberto. “Alessandro Giovanni Bandini” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 5 (1963). http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/alessandro-giovanni-bandini. Cantelupe, Eugene B. "The Anonymous Triumph of Venus in the Louvre: An Early Italian Renaissance Example of Mythological Disguise." The Art Bulletin 44, no. 3 (Sept, 1962): 238-42. Caro, Annibal. Delle lettere familiari del commendatore Annibal Caro. Padua: G. Comino, 1763. Carroll, Linda. “‘Fools of the Dukes of Ferrara:’ Dosso, Ruzante, and Changing Este Alliances.” MLN 118, no. 1, Italian Issue (Jan., 2003): 60-84. Castelvetro, Ludovico. “Correzione d’alcune cose nel Dialogo delle Lingue di Benedetto Varchi, per Ludovico Castelvetro.” In Benedetto Varchi, Opere di Benedetto Varchi ora per la prima volta raccolte, con un discorso di A. Racheli intorno ala fililogia del secolo XVI e alla vita e agli scritti dell’autore, aggiuntevi de Lettere di Gio. Battista Busini sopra l’assedio di Firenze. 2 vols, vol.2, 203-241. Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1858-9. Cartari, Vincenzo. Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi. Raccolte per Vincenzo Cartari. Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1556. Cavalcanti, Bartolomeo. “Oratione di M. Bartolomeo Cavalcanti Fiorentino.” In Delle oratione volgarmente scritte da molti huomini illustri, edited by Francesco Sansovino. Venice, 1561. Reprinted in Orazioni Scelte del Secolo SVI. Ridotte a buona lezione e commentate dal Prof. Giuseppe Lisio, 11-33. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1897. ———. Lettere edite e inedite. Collezione di opere inedite o rare. Edited by Christina Roaf. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1968. ———. Trattati sopra gli ottimi reggimenti delle repubbliche antiche e moderne, con le tre lettere sopra la riforma di una repubblica. Turin: Cugini Pomba e Comp., 1852. Cavallo, JoAnn. "Joking Matters: Politics and Dissimulation in Castiglione's Book of the Courtier." Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 2 (2000): 402-24. Cecchi, Alessandro. Agnolo Bronzino. Florence: Scala, 1996.

———. Gli anni fiorentini di Pierino,” in Piero del Vaga tra Raffaello e Michelangelo, edited by Giuliano Algeri, 37-50. Mantua, Palazzo Te and Milan: Electa, 2001. Exhibition catalogue.

235

———. "Il Bronzino, Benedetto Varchi, e l’Accademia Fiorentina: Ritratti di poeti, letterati e personaggi illustri della corte Medicea." Antichità Viva 30 (1991): 17-28. ———. "Un capolavoro ritrovato: il ritratto di Giovanni delle Bande Nere di Francesco Salviati." Medicea 6 (2010): 6-7. ———. "Le due capitali. Tra Firenze e Roma dalla caduta della repubblica fiorentina alla morte del Vasari." In Storia delle arti in Toscana: Il Cinquecento, edited by Roberto Paolo and Antonio Natali Ciardi, 117-36. Florence: Edifir, 2000. ———.“‘Famose Frondi de cui santi honori’: un sonetto del Varchi e il ritratto di Lorenzo Lenzi dipinto dal Bronzino.” Artista 2 (1990): 8-19. ———. “L’officina della maniera.” In L’officina della maniera. Varietà e fierezza nell’arte fiorentina del Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche, 1494-1530, edited by Alessandro Cecchi, Antonio Natali, and Carlo Sisi, 7-96. Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi; Venice: Marsilio, 1996. Exhibition catalogue. ———. "Il ritratto fiorentino del Cinquecento; da Andrea del Sarto a Bronzino" In Rafael: I Jego Spadkobiercy: Portret Klasyczny w Sztuce Nowzytnej Europy, edited by Sebastiana Dudzika and Tadeusza J. Zuchowskiego, 277-296. Turon: Wydawn, 2003. ———. "Un ritratto immaginario e celebrativo di Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai: indagini e ipotesi." I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 5 (1993): 265-78. Cecchi, Alessandro, Antonio Natali, and Carlo Sisi, eds. L’officina della maniera. Varietà e fierezza nell’arte fiorentina del Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche, 1494-1530. Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi and Venice: Marsilio, 1996. Exhibition catalogue. Chambers, David S. "The Earlier ‘Academies’ in Italy." In Italian Academies of the Sixteenth Century, 1-14. London: The Warburg Institute, 1995. Cheney, Liana de Girolami, and Sonia Michelotti Bonetti. "Bronzino's Pygmalion and Galatea: L'antica bella maniera." Discovery Journal (2006): 5-10. Ciappelli, Giovanni, and Patricia Lee Rubin. Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Ciardi, Roberto Paolo, and Antonio Natali. Pontormo e Rosso: atti del convegno di Empoli e Volterra progetto Appiani di . Florence: Giunta regionale Toscana; Venice: Marsilio, 1996. Civai, Alessandra. Dipinte e sculture nella casa Martelli. Storia di una collezione patrizia Fiorentina dal Quattrocento all’Ottocento. Florence: Opus Libri, 1990. ———. “Donatello e Roberto Martelli: nuove acquisizioni documentarie.” In Donatello-Studien, edited by Monika Cämmerer, 252-262. Munich: Bruckmann, 1989. Clapp, Frederick Mortimer. Jacopo Carucci Da Pontormo. His Life and Work. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916.

236

Cochrane, Eric. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Cohen, Charles E. "Two Studies for Pordenone's Destroyed Jason Scene on the Palazzo Doria, Genoa." Master Drawings 10, no. 2 (1972): 126-83. Cole, Michael W. Ambitious Form. Giambologna, Ammanati, and Danti in Florence. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011. ———. “Perpetual Exorcism in Sistine Rome.” In The Idol in the Age of Art: Object, Devotions and the Early Modern World, edited by Michael Wayne Cole and Rebecca Zorach, 57-76. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. ———. “Cellini’s Blood,” The Art Bulletin 81, no. 2 (June., 1999): 215-235 Compton, Rebekah Tipping. “A Cultural Icon: The Currency of Venus in Sixteenth-Century Florence.” Phd diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2009. ———. “Omnia vincit Amor”: the Sovereignty of Love in Tuscan Poetry and Michelangelo’s Venus and Cupid.” Mediaevalia 33 (2012): 229-260. Costa, Giorgio. Michelangelo alle corti di Niccolò Ridolfi e Cosimo I. Rome: Bulzoni, 2009. Costamagna, Philippe. Un capolavoro del Rinascimento: Pontormo, Ritratto di gentiluomo. Milan: Carlo Orsi, 2010. ———. "'De la fiorentinità des portraits de Pontormo et de Bronzino'." Paragone 3rd series, no. 62 (2005): 50-75. ———. "Francesco Salviati (1510-1563), peintre et dessinateur de portraits: une nouvelle attribution pour le Luthiste du Musée Jacquemart-André." Revue du Louvre 41, n. 5/6 (1991): 28- 34. ———. "De l'idéal de beauté aux problèmes d'attribution: vingt ans de recherche sur le portrait florentin au XVI siècle." Studiolo I (2002): 193-220. ———. "A New Portrait Drawing by Bronzino." Master Drawings 48, no. 2 (2010): 147-54. ———. "Nouvelles considérations sur un Portrait d'homme de Pontormo." Paragone 3rd series, no 59 (2005): 65-72. ———. Pontormo. Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint. Paris-Milan: Electa, 1994. ———. “Pontormo’s Lautenspieler. Ein wiederentdecktes Bildnis aus der Zeit der Florentiner Republik.” In Pontormo: Meisterwerke des Manierismus in Florenz, translated by Eva Dewes, edited by Bastian Eclercy, 97-105. Hannover: Landesmuseum, 2013. ———. “The Portraits of Bronzino.” In The Drawings of Bronzino, by Carmen Bambach (ed.), Janet Cox-Rearick and George Goldner. With Philippe Costamagna, Marzia Faietti and Elizabeth Pilliod, 51-60. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010. Exhibition Catalogue.

237

———. "Ritratti Di Esiliati Fiorentini." In Ritratto di un banchiere del Rinascimento. Bindo Altoviti tra Raffaello e Cellini / Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker. The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti. Edited by Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano and Dimitrios Zikos, 329-50. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003-4; Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello 2004. Costamagna, Philippe and A. Fabre. Les portraits florentins du début du XXVI siècle à l'avènement de Cosimo I: Catalogue raisonné d'Albertinelli à Pontormo. 5 vols. Paris: Musèe du Louvre, 1986. Cox-Rearick, Janet. "Bronzino as Draftsman." In The Drawings of Bronzino, by Carmen Bambach (ed.), Janet Cox-Rearick and George Goldner. With Philippe Costamagna, Marzia Faietti and Elizabeth Pilliod, 21-35. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010. Exhibition Catalogue. ———. Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. ———. "Bronzino's Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua: Prolegomena to the Chapel of Eleonora Di Toledo." The Art Bulletin 69, no. 1 (1987): 45-67. ———. The Drawings of Pontormo. A Catalogue Raisonné with Notes on the Paintings. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. ———. Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. "Friendly Rivals: Bronzino and Salviati at the Medici Court, 1543-48." Master Drawings 43, no. 3 (2005): 292-315. ———. "From Bandinelli to Bronzino: The Genesis of the 'Lamentation' for the Chapel of Eleonora Di Toledo." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 33, no. 1 (1989): 37-84. ———. An Important Painting by Pontormo from the Collection of Chauncey D. Stillman. Sales catalogue (Christie’s, 31 May, 1989). New York, 1989. ———. Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici. Sales catalogue (Sotheby’s, 08 July, 2009), London, 2009. ———. Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1 19-74), Half-length, in a Black Slashed Doublet and a Plumed Hat, Holding a Book. Sales catalogue (Christies, 29 January, 2014), New York, 2014. ———. "Power-Dressing at the Courts of Cosimo De' Medici and François I: The ‘moda alla spagnola’ of Spanish Consorts Eléonore D'Autriche and Eleonora Di Toledo." Artibus et Historiae 30, no. 60 (2009): 39-69. ———. “Review of Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo.” The Burlington Magazine 139, no. 1127 (Feb., 1997): 127-128

238

———."Some Early Drawings by Bronzino." Master Drawings 2, no. 4 (1964): 363-433. ———. “A ‘St. Sebastian’ by Bronzino,” Burlington Magazine, 129 (March, 1987): 155-162. ———. "Themes of Time and Rule at Poggio a Caiano: The Portico Frieze of Lorenzo il Magnifico." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 26, no. 2 (1982): 167-210. ———, Mary Westerman Bulgarella. "Public and Private Portraits of Cosimo De' Medici and Eleonora Di Toledo: Bronzino's Paintings of His Ducal Patrons in Ottawa and Turin." Artibus et Historiae 25, no. 49 (2004): 101-59. Cranston, Jodi. The Poetics of Portraiture in the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cropper, Elizabeth. “L’arte cortigiana a Firenze: dalla repubblica dissimulata allo stato paterno.” In Storia delle Arti in Toscana: il Cinquecento, edited by Roberto Paolo Ciardi and Antonio Natali, 85-115. Florence: Edifir, 2000. ———. “‘Heu vicit Venus’: amour et désir au XVI siècle à Florence.” Translated by Francois Boisivon. In Daniel Arasse: historien de l'art, edited by Danièle Cohn, 87-104. Paris: Les Èditions des Cendres / INHA, 2010. ———. "Per una lettura dei ritratti fiorentini del Bronzino” / “Reading Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici. Edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 245-55. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———. "Pontormo and Bronzino in Philadelphia: a double portrait." In Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence. Edited by Carl Brandon Strehlke. With Elizabeth Cropper, et al., 1-33. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art (2004-5); Pennsylvania University Press, 2004. Exhibition catalogue. ———. “Pontormo: Francesco Guardi as a Halberdier 1529-30.” In Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence. Edited by Carl Brandon Strehlke. With Elizabeth Cropper, et al., 92. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art (2004-5); Pennsylvania University Press, 2004. Exhibition catalogue. ———. Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier. Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 1997. ———. "Preparing to Finish: Portraits by Pontormo and Bronzino around 1530." In Sixteenth- Century Italian Art, edited by Michael W. Cole, 172-182. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006. Previously published in Opere e Giorni: Studi su mille anni di arte europea dedicati a Max Seidel. Edited by Klaus Bergdolt and Giorgio Bonsanti, 499-504. Venice: Marsilio, 2001. ———. "Prolegomena to a New Interpretation of Bronzino's Florentine Portraits." In Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, edited by Andrew Morrogh. 2 vols. Vol. 2, 149-62. Florence: Giunti Barbera 1985.

239

———. "Pygmalion and Galatea." In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 76-78. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———. “Pygmalion and Galatea.” In Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Renaissance in Florence, edited by David Franklin. With Louis A. Waldman, Andrew Butterfield, et al., 234-7. Ottawa: Museum of Fine Arts of Canada; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Exhibition catalogue. ———. “Ritratto di Francesco Guardi L’Alabardiere.” In L’officina della maniera. Varietà e fierezza nell’arte fiorentina del Cinquecento fra le due repubbliche, 1494-1530, edited by Alessandro Cecchi, Antonio Natali, and Carlo Sisi, 376. Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi; Venice: Marsilio, 1996. Exhibition catalogue. Crum, Roger J. “Donatello’s Bronze David and the Question of Foreign versus Domestic Tyranny.” Renaissance Studies 10, no. 4 (1996): 440-450. ———. “Roberto Martelli, the Council of Florence, and the Medici Palace Chapel.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 59, no. 3 (1996): 403-17. Currie, Stuart. "Secularised Sculptural Imagery, the Paragone Debate and Ironic Contextual Metamorphoses in Bronzino's Pygmalion Painting." In Secular Sculpture, 1300-1550, edited by Phillip Lindley and Thomas Frangenberg, 237-53. Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 2000. d'Addario, Arnaldo. Il problema senese nella prima metà del Cinquecento: La guerra di Siena. Florence: Le Monnier, 1958. ———. La formazione dello stato modern in Toscana: Da Cosimo Vecchio a Cosimo I de’ Medici. Lecce: Adriatica, 1976.

Damm, Heiko, Michael Thimann and Claus Zittel, eds. The Artist as Reader. On Education and Non-Education of Early Modern Artists. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Daniele, A. “Sperone Speroni, Bernardino Tomitani e l’Accademia degli Infiammati di Padova.” In Sperone Speroni, edited by G. Folena. Filogia Veneta, 2 (Padua, 1989): 1-53. Davidson, Bernice F. "Early Drawings by Perino Del Vaga. Part Two." Master Drawings 1, no. 4 (1963): 19-81. Bernice Davidson, "The Furti Di Giove Tapestries Designed by Perino Del Vaga for Andrea Doria." The Art Bulletin 70, no. 3 (1988): 424-50. ———. “The Navigatione d’ Enea Tapestries Designed by Perino del Vaga for Andrea Doria.” Art Bulletin 72, no. 1(1990): 35-50. Davies, Jonathan. Culture and Power: Tuscany and Its Universities 1537-1609. Leiden: Brill, 2009. De Gaetano, Armand L. Giambattista Gelli and the Florentine Academy: the rebellion against Latin. Florence: Olshki, 1976.

240

Dempsey, Charles. "Portraits and Masks in the Art of Lorenzo De' Medici, Botticelli, and Politian's Stanze per la Giostra." Renaissance Quarterly 52, no. 1 (1999): 1-42. ———. The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli's Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. ———. "Mercurius Ver: The Sources of Botticelli's Primavera." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968): 251-73. Diaz, Furio. Il Granducato di Toscana. I. I Medici. Turin: UTET, 1976. Diehl, C. Une République Patricienne, Venise. Paris: E. Flammarion, 1915. Domenichi, Ludovico, ed. Rime Diverse di Molti Eccellentissimi Autori, nuovamente raccolte… vol. 1. Venice: Giolito 1548. Donato, Maria Monica. Hercules and David in the Early Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio: Manuscript Evidence.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 83-98. Eclercy, Bastian. Pontormo: Meisterwerke Des Manierismus in Florenz. Hannover: Landesmuseum, 2013. Eisenbichler, Konrad. The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I De' Medici. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. ———. The Cultural World of Eleanora Di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Emiliani, Andrea, and Giorgio Cerboni Baiardi. Il Bronzino. Busto Arsizio: Bramante, 1960. Ettlinger, Leopold D. “Hercules Florentinus.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 16, no. 2 (1972): 119-142. Ewald, Gerhard. "Appunti sulla Galleria Gerini e sugli affreschi di Anton Domenico Gabbiani." In Kunst Des Barock in Der Toskana: Studien Zur Kunst Unter Den Letzten Medici, 344-58. Munich: Bruckmann, 1976. Falciani, Carlo. "Spigolature sul Bronzino (e sul Pontormo)." Paragone 3rd series, 111 (2013): 19-49. Falletti, Franca and Jonathan Katz Nelson, eds. Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova belleza ideale / Venus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty, Florence: Galleria dell’Accademia; Giunti; Firenze Musei, 2002. Exhibition catalogue. Feci, Simona. “Braccio Martelli.” Dizionario biografico degli Italiani 71 (2008). http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/braccio-martelli_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

Ferrai, Luigi Alberto. Cosimo de' Medici Duca di Firenze. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1882. ———. Lorenzino de' Medici e la società cortigiana del cinquecento. Milan: Hoepli, 1891.

241

Firpo, Massimo. “Bronzino e i Medici” / “Bronzino and the Medici.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 91-99. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———. Gli affreschi di Pontormo a San Lorenzo. Eresia, politica e cultura nella Firenze di Cosimo I. Turin: Einaudi, 1997. ———. "Gli occhi azzurri di Alessandro de' Medici: note su una copia di una celebre ritratto di Iacopo Pontormo." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 49, no.3 (2005): 413-26. ———. “Pontormo, Rosso and the Medici. Diverging Political Paths.” In Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism, edited by Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, 277- 283. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2014. Exhibition catalogue. ———. Storie di immagini. Immagini di storia. Studi di iconografia cinquecentesca. Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2010. Fisher, Will. "Peaches and Figs: Bisexual Eroticism in the Paintings and Burlesque Poetry of Bronzino." In Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment, edited by Allison Levy, 151-64. London: Ashgate, 2010. Forlani Tempesti, Anna and Alessandra Giovannetti. Pontormo. Florence: Octavo, 1994. Forster, Kurt W. "Metaphors of Rule. Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of Cosimo I De' Medici." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15, no. 1 (1971): 65-104. ———. "Probleme um Pontormos Porträtmalerei (I)." Pantheon 22 (1964): 376-385. Fossi, Gloria. Italian Art: Panting, Sculpture, Architecture from the Origins to the Present Day. Florence: Giunti, 2000. Frangenberg, Thomas, and Robert Williams. The Beholder: The Experience of Art in Early Modern Europe. London: Ashgate, 2006. Franklin, David, ed. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Renaissance in Florence. With Louis A. Waldman and Andrew Butterfield. Ottawa: Museum of Fine Arts of Canada; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005. Exhibition catalogue. Freedberg, Sydney J. Painting in Italy, 1500-1600. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. ———. Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1961. Freedman, Luba. “Neptune in Classical and Renaissance Visual Art.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 2, no. 2 (Fall, 1995), 219-237. Frey, Karl. “Studien zu Michelagniolo Buonarroti und zur Kunst seiner Zeit. III.” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 30 (1909): 103-180. 242

Geremicca, Antonio. Bronzino. “La dotta penna al pennel dotto pari.” Rome: Universitalia, 2013. ———. “Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man.” In Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism, edited by Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, 134. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2014. ———. “Portrait of a Bishop (Monsignor Niccolò Ardinghelli?” In Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism, edited by Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, 136. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2014. Exhibition catalogue. Gerini Andrea. Raccolta di ottanta stampe rappresentanti i quadri più scelte de’ Signori Marchesi Gerini. 2 vols. Florence: N. Pagni, G. Bardi, 1759-86. Giannotti, Donato. Dialogi di Donato Giannotti, de’ giorni che Dante consumò nel cercare l’inferno e ‘l puragtorio. Edited by D. Redig de Campos. Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1939. ———. Lettere a Piero Vettori. Edited by Roberto Ridolfi and Cecil Roth. Florence: Vallecchi, 1932. ———. Libro de la republica de vinitiani composto per Donato Giannotti. Rome: Antonio Blado d’Asola, 1542. ———. Opere politiche. Edited by Furio Diaz. 2 vols. Milan: Marzorati, 1974. ———. “Della repubblica fiorentina di Messer Donato Giannotti. Libri quattro.” In Opere Politiche e Letterarie di Donato Giannotti. Collazionate sui manoscritti e annotate da F.-L. Polidori. 2 vols, vol. 1, 57-288. Florence: Le Monnier, 1850. ———. Republica fiorentina: A Critical Edition and Introduction. Edited by Giovanni Silvano. Geneva: Droz, 1990. Gilbert, Creighton. "Texts and Contexts of the Medici Chapel." In Michelangelo: Selected Readings, edited by William Wallace, 303-21. New York: Garland, 1999. Gilbert, Felix. Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence. New York: Norton, 1984. Giambullari, Pierfrancesco. Apparato et feste nelle noze dello illustrissimo Signor Duca di Firenze, et della Duchessa sua Consorte, con le sue Stanze, Madriali, Comedia, e Intermedii, in quelle recitati. Florence: Giunti, 1539. Giordani, Simone. “Bronzino, Ten Thousand Martyrs.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 81 (cat. I.14). Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———. “Pontormo, Ten Thousand Martyrs.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and

243

Antonio Natali, 78 (cat. I.13). Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. Giorgi, Rafael de. “Allegorical Portrait of Dante.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 206-8. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———.“Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 202 (cat. IV.1). Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. Goldthwaite, Richard A. The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Gombrich, Ernst. "Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of His Circle." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 8 (1945): 7-60. Goodchild, Karen Hope. "Vasari Contra Bronzino." Source: Notes in the History of Art 28, no. 2 (2009): 28-32. Gordon, Donald James. “Giannotti, Michelangelo, and the Cult of Brutus,” in The Renaissance Imagination, edited by Stephen Orgel and Donald James Gordon, 233-246. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. Graf, F. "Women, War, and Warlike Divinities." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 55 (1984): 245-254. Grayson, Cecil. “Poesie latine di Gentile Becchi in un codice bodleiano.” In Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi, edited by B. Maracchi Biagiarelli and D. E. Rhodes, 285-303. Florence: Olschki, 1973. Greene, Thomas M. “History and Anachronism,” in The Vulnerable Text: Essays on Renaissance Literature, 218-35. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Gorse, George L. “An Unpublished Description of the Villa Doria in Genoa during Charles V’s Entry, 1533,” Art Bulletin 68, no. 2 (June, 1986): 319-322. ———. “The Villa of Andrea Doria in Genoa: Architecture, Gardens, and Suburban Setting,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 44, no. 1 (Mar., 1985): 18-36. Guicciardini, Francesco. Dialogue on the Government of Florence. Edited by Alison Brown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Haitovsky, Dalia. "Pontormo's ‘Eleven Thousand Martyrs’ and Leonardo's ‘Adoration of the Magi’." Source: Notes in the History of Art 9, no. 3 (1990): 11-18.

244

Hale, J. R. Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control. Plymouth: Latimer Trend, 1977. ———. Renaissance War Studies. London: Hambledon Press, 1983. Hankins, James. "The "Baron Thesis" after Forty Years and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni." Journal of the History of Ideas 56, no. 2 (1995): 309-38. ———. “The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly, 44 (Autumn, 1991): 429-475. ———. Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hanning, Robert W. and David Rosand. Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Harness, Kelley. "‘La Flora’ and the End of Female Rule in Tuscany." Journal of the American Musicological Society 51, no. 3 (1998): 437-76. Hartt, Frederick. "Art and Freedom in Quattrocento Florence." In Modern Perspectives in Western Art History: An Anthology of 20th Century Writings on the Visual Arts, edited by W.E. Kleinbauer, 293-311. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.

———. “New Light on the Rossellino Family,” Burlington Magazine 102 (1961): 387-92.

Hefford, Wendy. "The Chicago Pygmalion and the ‘English Metamorphoses’." Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 10 (1983): 93-117. Held, Julius. “Flora, Goddess and Courtesan.” In De artibus opuscula XL; Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, edited by Millard Meiss, 201-13. New York: New York University Press, 1961. Hendler, Sefy. “Lyric Poet.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 260 (cat. V.3). Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———. “Ten Thousand Martyrs.” In Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism, edited by Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, 290. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2014. Herzner, Volker. “David Florentinus,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 24 (1982): 63-142. Hibbard, Howard. Michelangelo. 2nd edition. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Hibbert, Christopher. The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall. New York: Morrow, 1999. Heikamp, Detlef. “Poesie in vituperio del Bandinelli.” Paragone 175 (1964): 59-68. Hirst, Michael. Michelangelo. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. ———. "Michelangelo in Florence: 'David' in 1503 and 'Hercules' in 1506." The Burlington Magazine 142, no. 1169 (Aug., 2000): 487-92.

245

Huskey, Samuel J. "Ovid and the Fall of Troy in Tristia 1.3." Vergilius 48 (2002): 88-104. Ingendaay, Martina. “La collezione Gerini a Firenze: documenti inediti relative a quadri, disegni e incisioni,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 51, no. 3/4 (2007): 409-476. Jacobs, Fredrika Herman. "Aretino and Michelangelo, Dolce and Titian: Femmina, Masculo, Grazia." Art Bulletin 81, no. 1 (2000): 51-68. ———. The Living Image in Renaissance Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. ———. "Vasari's Bronzino: The Paradigmatic Academician." In Reading Vasari, edited by Anne B. Barriault, Andrew Ladis et al., 101-15. London: P. Wilson, 2005. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 923-1210. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Janson, H. W. The Sculpture of Donatello. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958. Jayne, Sears Reynold. Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposium. The Text and a Translation. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1944. Joannides, Paul. "Two Drawings Related to Michelangelo's ‘Hercules and Antaeus’." Master Drawings 41, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 105-118. Johnson, Geraldine A. “Michelangelo, Fortunetelling, & the Formation of Artistic Canons in Fanti’s Triompho di Fortuna.” In Coming About…A Festschrift for John Shearman, edited by Lars R. Jones and Louisa C. Matthew, 199-205. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001. Homer, The Iliad. Translated by Ian Johnston. Arlington, Va.: Richer Resources Publications, 2006. Jonietz, Fabian. “Die Scuole delle arti als Orte der aemulatio: der Fall der Cappella Brancacci,” in Aemulatio: Kulturen des Wettstreits in Text und Bild (1450-1620): 769-812. Jurdjevic, Mark. Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. "Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate." Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001): 721- 43. Kallendorf, Craig. "Cristoforo Landino's Aeneid and the Humanist Critical Tradition." Renaissance Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1983): 519-46. ———. "Virgil, Dante, and Empire in Italian Thought, 1300-1500." Vergilius 34 (1988): 44-69.

246

Karant-Nunn, Susan C. “Review of Erica Batress-Dukehart, The Zimmern Chronicle: Nobility, Memory, and Self-Representation in Sixteenth-Century Germany.” Sixteenth Century Journal 35, no. 2 (Summer, 2004): 505-6. Keizer, Joost. "Giuliano Salviati, Michelangelo and the 'David'." The Burlington Magazine 150, no. 1267 (Oct., 2008): 664-68. ———."Michelangelo, Drawing, and the Subject of Art." The Art Bulletin 93, no. 3 (Sep., 2011): 304-24. Kent, Dale V. The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Keutner, H. "Zu Einigen Bildnissen des frühen Florentiner Manierismus." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 7 (1959): 139-154. Lactantius, Divine Institutes. Translated and edited by Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003. Laframboise, Alain. "Entre Galatée et Andromède, Méduse." In Andromède Ou Le Héros à L'épreuve De La Beauté, edited by Francoise Siguret and Alain Laframboise, 27-55. Paris: Klincksieck, 1996. ———. "Les portraits Emblématiques de Bronzino, aux marges des pratiques symboliques consacrées dans les arts visuels"." Analecta Husserliana 64, no. 44 (1995): 297-317. Landino, Cristoforo. Comento sopra la Comedia di Dante Alighieri poeta fiorentino. (Florence: Nicholò di Lorenzo della Magna, 1481). Edited by Paolo Procaccioli. 4 vols. Rome: Salerno, 2001. ———. Disputationes Camaldulensis. In Thomas H. Stahel, "Cristoforo Landino's Allegorization of the Aeneid: Books III and IV of the Camaldolese Disputations," translated by Thomas H. Stahel. PhD diss: Johns Hopkins University, 1968. Langdon, Gabrielle. Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. Langedijk, Karla. "Baccio Bandinelli's Orpheus: A Political Message." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 20, no. 1 (1976): 33-52. ———. The Portraits of the Medici, 15th-18th Centuries. 3 vols. Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1981-87. ———. “Review of Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art. Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 20, no. 4 (1990- 91): 287-293. Lavin, Irving. "David's Sling and Michelangelo's Bow: A Sign of Freedom." In Past-Present: Essays on Historicism in Art from Donatello to Picasso, 29-61+ 268-74. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

247

Law, Helen H., “The Name Galatea in the Pygmalion Myth.” The Classical Journal 27, no. 5 (Feb., 1932): 337-342. Hay, Dennis and John Law, Italy in the age of the Renaissance 1380-1530. London: Longman Group, 1989. Lentzen, Manfred. Studien zur Dante-Exegese Cristoforo Landinos. Cologne-Vienna: Studi Italiani, 1971. Leporatti, Roberto. "Venere, Cupido e i poeti d'amore / Venus, Cupid and the Poets of Love.” In Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova belleza ideale / Venus and Love: Michelangelo and the New Ideal of Beauty, edited by Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz Nelson, 65-89. Florence: Galleria dell’Accademia, 2002. Exhibition catalogue. Levine, Saul. “The Location of Michelangelo’s David: The Meeting of January 25, 1504.” Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 21-49. Lewine, Carol F. “Aries, Taurus, and Gemini in Raphael’s Sacrifice at Lystra.” The Art Bulletin 72, no. 2 (Jun., 1990): 271-293. Litchfield, R. Burr. The Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. ———. Florence Ducal Capital, 1530-1630. New York: ACLS Humanities E-Book, 2008. Litta, Pompeo, and Luigi Passerini, et al. Famiglie celebri di Italia. 18 vols. Milan: Giusti, 1819. Lo Re, Salvatore. “Benedetto Varchi. Contributi per una biografia.” Phd diss., l’Universita degli Studi di Catania: 1995-96. ———. "‘Chi potrebbe mai, a questi tempi, badare a lettere?’: Benedetto Varchi, Piero Vettori e la crisi fiorentina del 1537." Studi Storici 43, no. 2 (2000): 367-509. ———. La crisi della libertà fiorentina: alle origini della formazione politica e intellettuale di Benedetto Varchi e Piero Vettori. Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 2006. ———. Politica e cultura nella Firenze cosimiana: studi su Benedetto Varchi. Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2008. Lord, Carla. "Raphael, Marcantonio Raimondi, and Virgil." Source: Notes in the History of Art 3, no. 4 (1984): 81-92. Luchinat, Cristina Acidini. The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Lundahl, Kalle. “The Architectural Setting in the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli by Bronzino.” Konsthistorisk tidskrift 82, no. 1 (2013): 26-35. Lydecker, J.K. “The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence.” Phd diss., John Hopkins University, 1987.

248

Machiavelli, Niccolò. Il Principe. Edited by Giuseppe Lisio. Florence: Sansoni, 1900. Maier, Jessica. “A ‘True Likeness’: The Renaissance City Portrait.” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2012): 711-52. Manacorda, Guido. Benedetto Varchi: l’uomo, il poeta, il critico. Pisa: Fratelli Nistri, 1903. Manuzio, Paolo, ed. Lettere volgari di diversi nobilissimi huomini, et eccellentissimi ingegni: scritte in diverse materie. 2 vols. Venice: Aldi filii, 1551-3. Marmor, Max. “A Pattern for the ‘Primavera’.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 23, no. 1 (2003): 9-16. ———. "From Purgatory to the ‘Primavera’: Some Observations on Botticelli and Dante." Artibus et Historiae 24, no. 48 (2003): 199-212. Martelli, Niccolò. Il primo libro delle lettere. Florence: 1546. Martelli, Ugolino di Niccolò. Ricordanze dal 1433 al 1483 di Ugolino di Niccolò Martelli. Edited by Fulvio Pezzarossa. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1989. Martelli, Ugolino, Pietro Vettori and Vanni Bramanti. Lettere a Piero Vettori, 1536-1577. Edited by Vanni Bramanti. Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2009. Martin, John Jeffries. Myths of Renaissance Individualism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Martin, Thomas. "Michelangelo's ‘Brutus’ and the Classicizing Portrait Bust in Sixteenth- Century Italy." Artibus et Historiae 14, no. 27 (1993): 67-83. Martines, Lauro. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. ———. “I Martelli e il ritorno di Cosimo Medici, 1434.” Archivio Storico Italiano 117 (1959): 29-43. ———. “Poetry as Politics and Memory in Renaissance Florence and Italy.” In Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, edited by Giovanni Ciapelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, 48-63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy. New York: Knopf, 1979. Mather, Frank Jewett. “The Halberdier by Pontormo.” Art in America 10 (1922): 66-69. McCarter, Stephanie. "The Forging of a God: Venus, the Shield of Aeneas, and Callimachus's ‘Hymn to Artemis’." Transactions of the American Philological Association 142, no. 2 (2012): 355-81. McComb, Arthur K. Agnolo Bronzino; His Life and Works. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1928.

249

McCorquodale, Charles. Bronzino. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. McHam, Sarah Blake. “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (March, 2001): 32-47. ———. [Sarah Blake Wilk] “Donatello’s ‘Dovizia’ as an image of Florentine Political Propaganda.” Artibus et Historiae XIV (1986): 9-28. Mendelsohn, Leatrice. Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi's Due Lezzioni and Cinquecento Art Theory. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982. Merritt, Howard S. "The Legend of St. Achatius: Bachiacca, Perino, Pontormo." The Art Bulletin 45, no. 3 (Sept., 1963): 258-63. Milner, Stephen J. "Exile, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Civic Republican Discourse." In At the Margins: Minority Groups in Pre-Modern Italy, edited by Stephen J. Milner, 162-91. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. ———. "The Florentine Piazza Della Signoria as Practiced Place." In Renaissance Florence: A Social History, edited by Roger Crum and John Paoletti, 83-103. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Minor, Andrew C. and Bonner Mitchell. A Renaissance Entertainment: Festivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539. Columbia, MO.: University of Missouri Press, 1968. Monbeig-Goguel, Catherine. Francesco Salviati, 1510-1563, o la bella maniera. (Rome, , 29 gennaio-29 marzo, 1998). Paris: Musèe du Louvre; Milan: Electa, 1998. Muir, Edward. "Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice." The American Historical Review 84, no. 1 (1979): 16-52. ———. “Representations of Power in Renaissance Italy.” In Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550. Edited by John M. Najemy, 226-45. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ——— and Ronald F. E. Weissman. "Social and Symbolic Places in Renaissance Venice and Florence." In The Power of Place: Integrating Geographical and Sociological Imaginations, edited by John Agnew and James Duncan, 81-103. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Muratore, David. La biblioteca del cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi: testo Greco e Latino. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2009. Claudio, Mutini. “Bartolomeo Cavalcanti.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 22. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1979. Naldi, Giovanna, Rossella Carrus, and Valentina Tofani, eds., Futuro Antico. Storia della Famiglia Antinori e del suo palazzo. Florence: Alinari, 2007. Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood. "Interventions: Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism." The Art Bulletin 87, no. 3 (2005): 403-15.

250

———. The Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010). Najemy, John M. "Baron's Machiavelli and Renaissance Republicanism." The American Historical Review 101, no. 1 (Feb., 1996): 119-29. ———. "Civic Humanism and Florentine Politics." In Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, edited by James Hankins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. A History of Florence 1200-1575. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. ———, ed. Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300-1550. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. “The Republic’s Two Bodies: Body Metaphors in Italian Renaissance Political Thought.” In Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, edited by Alison Wright, 237-262. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. ———. “Review of Hans Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought." Renaissance Quarterly 45, no. 2 (Summer, 1992): 340-50. Nardi, Jacopo. “Esposizione del salmo quinto ‘Verba mea auribus percipe’ esposto in Napoli, e mandata alla Maestà di Carlo V Imperadore, in nome degli esuli fiorentini e di tutto il popolo fiorentino.” In Vita di Antonio Giacomini: e altri scritti minori…, edited by Carlo Gargiolli, 311- 337. Florence: Barbèra, 1867. ———. Istorie della città di Firenze di Iacopo Nardi. Edited by Agenore Gelli. 2 vols. Florence: Le Monnier, 1858. ———. "Letter to Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi, 18 January 1537." In Archivio storico italiano, new series, 1, 215-16. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1537. ———, and Vanni Bramanti. “Lettere inedited di Jacopo Nardi.” Archivio Storico Italiano 579, I (1999): 101-130. Natali, Antonio and Carlo Falciani, eds. “Agnolo Bronzino’s Early Years: Florence, then Pesaro.” In Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, 37-55. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. ———. Bronzino: Pittore e Poeta Alla Corte Dei Medici / Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici, edited by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali. Florence (Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi): Mandragora, 2010. Exhibition catalogue. Nelson, Jonathan Katz. “Dante Portraits in Sixteenth Century Florence.” Gazette des beaux-arts, 6th ser.120, (September 1992): 59-77. ———."The Florence 'Venus and Cupid’: A Heroic Female Nude and the Power of Love." In Venere e amore: Michelangelo e la nuova belleza ideale / Venus and Love: Michelangelo and

251 the New Ideal of Beauty, edited by Franca Falletti and Jonathan Katz Nelson, 26-63. Florence: Galleria dell’Accademia, 2002. Exhibition catalogue. Nigro, Salvatore Silvano. L'orologio Di Pontormo: Invenzione di un Pittore Manieristica. Milan: Rizzoli, 1998. Nova, Alessandro. "Salviati, Vasari, and the Reuse of Drawings in Their Working Practice." Master Drawings 30, no. 1 (1992): 83-108. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: W.R. Hacket, 2010. Palmarocchi, Roberto. "Famiglia Martelli," Enciclopedia Italiana Online, 1934. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/martelli_(Enciclopedia-Italiana)/ Panofsky, Erwin. Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939. Parker, Deborah. Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. ———. "Bronzino and the Diligence of Art." Artibus et Historiae 25, no. 49 (2004): 161-74. ———. Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. "The Poetry of Patronage: Bronzino and the Medici." Renaissance Studies 17, no. 2 (July 2003): 230-45. ———. "Towards a Reading of Bronzino's Burlesque Poetry." Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 1011-44. ———."Vasari's Ritratto Di Sei Poeti Toscani: A Visible Literary History." MLN 127, no. 1 (Jan.,2012): 204-15. Parronchi, Alessandro. Donatello e il Potere. Florence: Il Portolano, 1980. ———. Il più vero ritratto di Dante: profili di artisti e studi su opere del Rinascimento. Florence: Polistampa, 1998. Picquet, Thea. "’Florentins et rebelles: Le témoignage de Jacopo Nardi’." In soulèvement et ruptures: L'Italie en quête de sa révolution. Echos littéraires et artistiques. Actes du Colloque des 4 et 5 décembre 1997, 49-71 Université Nancy : Culture et société dans les lettres italiennes, 1998. Pilliod, Elizabeth. "Bronzino's Household." The Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1067 (1992): 92- 100. ———. "The Influence of Michelangelo: Pontormo, Bronzino and Allori." In Reactions to the Master: Michelangelo's Effect on Art and Artists in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis and Paul Joannides, 31-52. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.

252

———. “‘In Tempore Poenitentiae’: Pierfrancesco Foschi’s Portrait of Cardinal Antonio Pucci.” The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1026 (Sep., 1988): 679-687. ———. “The Life of Bronzino.” In The Drawings of Bronzino, Carmen Bambach (ed.), Janet Cox-Rearick and George Goldner. With Philippe Costamagna, Marzia Faietti and Elizabeth Pilliod, 51-60. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010. Exhibition Catalogue. ———. "Method and Practice in Bronzino's Drawing Modes: From Study to Modello." Artibus et Historiae 27, no. 54 (2006): 95-127. ———. "Pontormo and Bronzino at the Certosa." The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 20 (1992): 77-88. ———. Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori. A Genealogy of Florentine Art. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. ———. “Representation, Misrepresentation, and Non-Representation: Vasari and His Competitors,” in Phillip Jacks, ed., Vasari’s Florence: Artists and Literati at the Medicean Court (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998): 30-54 ———. "A Study (Cartoon) for a Portrait by Pontormo." Art Bulletin of The National Museum, Stockholm 13 (2007): 85-94. Pinelli, Antonio. La bellezza impura: Arte e politica nell'Italia del Rinascimento. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2004. Piovan, F. "Sul soggiorno padovano di Benedetto Varchi. Documenti inediti." Quaderni per la storia dell' Università di Padova 18 (1985): 171-181. Pirotti, Umberto. Benedetto Varchi e la cultura del suo tempo. Florence: Olschki, 1971. ———. “Benedetto Varchi e la questione della lingua.” Convivium 28 (1960): 524-52; Pizzorusso, Claudio. “Galileo in the Garden: Observations on the sculptural furnishings of Florentine gardens between the sixteenth and seventh centuries.” In The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, edited by Cristina Acidini Luchinat, 113-123. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Plaisance, Michel. L'Accademia e il suo principe: Cultura e politica a Firenze al tempo di Cosimo I e di Francesco de' Medici. Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2004. ———. Antonfrancesco Grazzini dit Lasca (1505-1584): Écrire dans la Florence des Médicis. Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2005.

———. “Culture et politique à Florence de 1542 à 1551: Lasca et les Humidi aux prises avec l’Académie Florentine.” In Les ècrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l’époque de la Renaissance (deuxième série), edited by Andrè Rochon, 149-242. Paris : CRRI, 1974.

253

———. Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Translated and edited by Nicole Carew-Reid. Ontario: University of Toronto, 2008. ———. “Une première affirmation de la politique culturelle de Come Ier: la transformation de l’Académie des ‘Humidi’ en Académie Florentine (1540-42).” In Les Écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie a l’époque de la Renaissance (première série), edited by Andrè Rochon, 361-438. Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1973. Plazzotta, Carol. "Bronzino's Laura." The Burlington Magazine 140, no. 141 (Apr. 1998): 251-63. ———. “The Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni?)” In Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, edited by Lorne Campbell, 224-6 (cat. 69). London, National Portrait Gallery, 1999-2000. London-New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. Plutarch. The Parallel Lives. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin, vol. 1. London: Loeb, 1914. Pocock, J.G.A. The Machiavellian Moment, Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974. Polizzotto, Lorenzo. The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494-1545. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994. ———. “Iustus ut palma florebit: Pier Soderini and Florentine Justice.” In Rituals, Images, and Words, edited by F.W. Kent and Charles Zika. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Pope-Hennessey, John. “The Martelli David.” Burlington Magazine 101, no. 673 (Apr., 1959): 132 +134-139. Puttfarken, Thomas. "Golden Age and Justice in Sixteenth-Century Florentine Political Thought and Imagery: Observations on Three Pictures by Jacopo Zucchi." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980): 130-49. Quint, David. The Stanze of Angelo Poliziano. 2nd edition. University Park: Penn State University Press, 1993. Randolph, Adrian W. B. Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth- Century Florence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. ———. “Republican Florence, 1400-1434.” In Florence, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis, 119- 167 + 137-9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Rastrelli, Modesto. Storia d'Alessandro de' Medici Primo Duca de Firenze. 2 vols. Florence: Benucci, 1781. Rebecchini, G. “Fonti mantovane sul conflitto fra Alessandro de’ Medici e I fuorusciti fiorentini durante la visita a Napoli di Carlo V nel 1536.” Archivio storico italiano 156 (1998): 517-529. Ridolfi, Roberto. “La biblioteca del cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi (1501-1550).” La bibliofilía 31 (1929): 173-93.

254

———. Vita di Girolamo Savonarola. 2 vols. Florence: Giuntina, 1952. Riklin, Alois. "The Division of Power avant la lettre: Donato Giannotti (1534)." History of Political Thought 29, no. 2 (2008): 257-72. ———. Giannotti, Michelangelo und der Tyrannenmord. Berne-Vienna: Manzsche, 1996. Romoli, Marco Antonio. Notizie risguardanti la vita di monsignore Ugolino Martelli, Vescovo Di Glandeva, del dottore Marco Antonio Romoli, dedicate all' illustrissimo Signore Abate Leonardo Martelli. Florence: Andrea Bonducci, 1759. Rosand, David. "Venetia Figurata: The Iconography of a Myth." In Interpretazioni Veneziane: Studi Di Storia Dell'arte in Onore Di Michelangelo Muraro, edited by David Rosand, 177-96. Venice: Arsenale, 1984. Rosenberg, Raphael. “The Reproduction and Publication of Michelangelo’s Sacristy: Drawings and Prints by Franco, Salviati, Naldini and Corti.” In Reactions to the Master: Michelangelo’s Effect on Art and Artists in the Sixteenth Century, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis and Paul Joannides, 114-135. London: Ashgate, 2003. Roth, Cecil. The Last Florentine Republic, 1527-1530. London: Methuen, 1925. Roworth, Wendy Wassyng. “The Evolution of History Painting: Masaniello’s Revolt and Other Disasters in Seventeenth-Century Naples,” The Art Bulletin 75, no. 2 (Jun., 1993): 219-234. Rubin, Patricia Lee. Giorgio Vasari: Art and History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Rubinstein, Nicolai. “The End of Florentine Liberty: the Fortezza da Basso.” In Florentine Studies. Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, edited by N. Rubinstein, 501-532. London: Faber, 1968. ———. "Firenze tra repubblica e principato e i ritratti dei Medici del Pontormo." Pontormo e Rosso: atti del convegno di Empoli e Volterra progetto Appiani di Piombino, 18-25. Florence: Giunta regionale Toscana; Venice: Marsilio, 1996. ———. "Florentina Libertas." Rinascimento 26 (1986): 3-27. ———. “Florentine Constitutionalism and Medici Ascendancy in the Fifteenth Century” in Florentine Studies. Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. N. Rubinstein (London: Faber, 1968): 442-63. ———. Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence. London: Faber, 1968. ———. The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494). 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

———. Il Governo Di Firenze Sotto I Medici (1434-1494). Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1971. ———. The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

255

———. Politics, Diplomacy and the Constitution in Florence and Italy. Volume 2 of Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Giovanni Ciappelli. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011. ———.“Vasari’s Painting of The Foundation of Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio.” In Studies in Italian History in the Middle Ages and The Renaissance, Volume 1: Political Thought and the Language of Art and Politics, edited by Giovanni Ciapelli, 131-150. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004. ———."Youth and Spring in Botticelli's Primavera." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 60 (1997): 248-51. Russell, Francis. "A Portrait of a Young Man in Black by Pontormo." Burlington Magazine 50 (Oct., 2008): 675-77. Russo, Francesca. L'apologia del tirannicidio di Lorenzino de' Medici: dalla teoria alla prassi politica. Naples: Università Suor Orsola Benincasa, 2006. ———. Bruto a Firenze: mito, immagine e personaggio tra umanesimo e Rinascimento. Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 2008. ———. “L’idea di Res Publica e pensiero anti-tirannico in Donato Giannoti negli anni dell’esilio,” Annali della Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa, vol. 1 (2009): 179-194. Ruvoldt, Maria. "Michelangelo's Slaves and the Gift of Liberty." Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 4 (Winter, 2012): 1029-1059. Salzman-Mitchell, Patricia. “A Whole out of Pieces: Pygmalion's Ivory Statue in Ovid's Metamorphoses.” Arethusa 41, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 291-311. Samuels, Richard S. "Benedetto Varchi, the Accademia degli Infiammati, and the Origins of the Italian Academic Movement." Renaissance Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1976): 599-634. Sanesi, Emilio. Dell' Accademia Fiorentina Nel '500. Atti della Società Colombaria Fiorentina, Accademia di Studi Storici, Letterari, Scientifici e di Belle Arti (1934-1935). Florence: Stab. Tip. già Chiari, Succ. C. Mori, 1936. Saslow, James M. The Poetry of Michelangelo: An Annotated Translation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Segni, Bernardo. Istorie fiorentine dall'anno MDXXVII al MDLV… Edited by G. Gargani. Florence: Barbèra, Bianchi, 1857. Settis, Salvatore. “Citarea ‘su una impresa di bronconi’.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971): 135-77. Seymour, Charles. Michelangelo’s David: A Search for Identity. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967. 256

Shaw, Christine. The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Shearman, John. “The Florentine Entrata of Leo X, 1515. ” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 38 (1975): 136-154. Sherberg, Michael. “The Accademia Fiorentina and the Question of the Language: The Politics of Theory in Ducal Florence,” Renaissance Quarterly 56, No. 1 (Spring 2003): 26-55 Siguret, Françoise and Alain Laframboise. Andromède ou le héros à l'épreuve de la beauté. Paris: Louvre : Klincksieck, 1996. Simon, Robert B. “Bronzino's Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici in Armor.” Phd diss.: Columbia University, 1982. Simoncelli, Paolo. Il Cavaliere Dimezzato: Paolo del Rosso "Fiorentino E Letterato". Collana Letteratura. 3. ed. Milan: F. Angeli, 1992. ———. "Le comunità fiorentine all'estero nel '500: ideologia e politica finanziaria." In Circolazione di uomini e d'idee tra Italia ed Europa nell'età della controriforma. Atti del XXXVI Convegno di studi sulla riforma e i movimenti religiosi in Italia, edited by Susanna Peyronel Rambaldi, 5-12. Torre Pellice: Bollettino della Società di studi Valdesi 1997. ———. "Florentine Fuorusciti at the Time of Bindo Altoviti." In Raphael, Cellini, & a Renaissance Banker, edited by Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano and Dimitrios Zikos, 285-328. Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003-4; Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello 2004. ———. Fuoriuscitismo repubblicano fiorentino, 1530-54. Florence: Franco Angeli, 2006. ———. "Su Jacopo Nardi, i Giunti e la ‘Nazione Fiorentina’ Di Venezia." In Studi in onore di Arnaldo d'Addario, edited by Francesco De Luca, Luigi Borgia, Paolo Viti, and Raffaella Maria Zaccaria, 937-49. Lecce: Conte, 1996. ———. La Lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra accademici e fuoriusciti fiorentini. Florence: Olschki, 1984. ———. "The Turbulent Life of the Florentine Community in Venice." In Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations, edited by Michelle M. Fontaine Ronald K. Delph, John Jeffries Martin, 113-34. Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2006. Simons, Patricia. "Disegno and Desire in Pontormo's Alessandro De' Medici." Renaissance Studies 22, no. 5 (2008): 650-68. Sirén, Osvald. “Two Florentine Sculptures Sold to America.” Burlington Magazine 29, no. 161 (Aug., 1916): 197-199. Smith, Graham. "Bronzino and Dürer." The Burlington Magazine 119, no. 895 (Oct., 1977): 708- 10.

257

———. “Bronzino's ‘Portrait of Laura Battiferri’.” Source: Notes in the History of Art 15, no. 4 (1996): 30-38. ———. "Bronzino's Portrait of Stefano Colonna. A Note on Its Florentine Provenance." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 40, no. 3/4 (1977): 265-69. Smyth, Craig Hugh. “Bronzino Studies.” Phd diss., Princeton University, 1955. ———. "The Earliest Works of Bronzino." The Art Bulletin 31, no. 3 (1949): 184-210. ———. "On Dosso Dossi at Pesaro." In Dosso's Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, edited by Steven F. Ostrow, Luisa Ciammitti, and Salvatore Settis, 241-62. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998. Smyth, Craig Hugh, and Elizabeth Cropper. Mannerism and Maniera. 2nd edition. Vienna: IRSA, 1992. Snyder, Jon R. Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Sperling, Christine. “Donatello’s bronze ‘David’ and the demands of Medici politics.” Burlington Magazine 134 (1992): 218-224. Speroni, Charles. “Dante’s Prophetic Morning-Dreams.” Studies in Philology 45 (1981): 50-59. Spini, Giorgio. Cosimo I e l’indipendenza del principato mediceo. 2nd ed. Florence: Vallecchi, 1980 ———. ed., Cosimo I de’ Medici: Lettere. Florence: Vallecchi, 1940. ———. "Politicità Di Michelangelo." Rivista storica italiana 76 (1964): 556-600. Starn, Randolph. Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. ———, and Loren W. Partridge. Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300-1600. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. ———. Donato Giannotti and His Epistolae. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1968. Steinberg, Leo. "Pontormo's Alessandro De' Medici, or, I Only Have Eyes for You." Art in America 63 (January-February, 1975): 62-5. Stephens, J. N. The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512-1530. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. Stoichi , Victor I. The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock. Translated by Alison Anderson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. Storey, Christina. “The Philosopher, the Poet, and the Fragment: Ficino, Poliziano, and Le stanze per la giostra.” The Modern Language Review 98, no. 3 (Jul., 2003): 602-19.

258

Strehlke, Carl Brandon. "Bronzino and Pontormo, For and Against the Medici." In Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence. With Elizabeth Cropper, et al., xi-xiii. Philadephia: Philadelphia Museum of Art (2004-5); Pennsylvania University Press, 2004. Exhibition Catalogue. ———. "Pontormo, Alessandro de' Medici, and the Palazzo Pazzi." Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 81, no. 348 (1985): 3-15. ———. “Review of Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, Bronzino: Painter and Poet at the Court of the Medici.” Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. 2 (Summer, 2011): 573-5. Strinati, Claudio M. Bronzino. Rome: Viviani, 2010. Summers, David. "David's Scowl." In Michelangelo: Selected Readings, edited by William Wallace, 81-92. New York: Garland, 1999. Tabacchi, Stefano. "Giuliano de’ Medici.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 73 (2009). http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giuliano-de-medici_res-f9a5fec6-dcde-11df-9ef0- d5ce3506d72e_(Dizionario-Biografico)/ Talvacchia, Bette L. “Homer, Greek Heroes and Hellenism in Giulio Roman’s Hall of Troy.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988): 235-242. Tanner, Marie. The Last Descendant of Aeneas. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Tazartes, Maurizia. Bronzino. Milan: Rizzoli, 2003. ———. Il “ghiribizzoso” Pontormo. Florence: M. Pagliai, 2008. Terry, Ally. “Donatello’s Decapitations and the Rhetoric of Beheading in Medicean Florence.” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 5 (2009): 609-638 Tiribilli-Giuliani, Demostene. “Ugolino Martelli,” in Summario storico delle famiglie celebri Toscane.... 3 vols, vol. 2 (Florence: Ulisse Diligenti, 1868). Thomas, Ben. "The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli." Print Quarterly 22 (2005): 3-14. Tolnay, Charles de. Michelangelo. Volume 5: The Final Period. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. ———. "Michaelangelo's Bust of Brutus." The Burlington Magazine 67, no. 388 (1935): 23-29. ———. "Michelangelo's Political Opinions." In Michelangelo: Selected Readings, edited by William Wallace, 19-60: New York: Garland, 1999. Toynbee, Paget. ed. Dantis Alagherii Epistolae: The Letters of Dante. Emended Text with Introduction, translation, notes… Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920. Trapp, J. B. "Petrarch's Laura: The Portraiture of an Imaginary Beloved." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 64 (2001): 55-192.

259

Trento, Dario. "Pontormo e la corte di Cosimo I." In Kunst Des Cinquecento in Der Toskana, 139-45. Munich: Bruckmann, 1992. Trexler, Richard. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1991. Veen, Henk Th. van "The Accademia Degli Alterati and Civic Virtue." In The Reach of the Republic of Letters: Literary and Learned Societies in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe edited by Arjan van Dixhoorn, and Susie Speakman Sutch, 285-308. Leiden: Brill, 2008. ———. Cosimo De’ Medici and his Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. "The Crown of the Marzocco and the Medici Dukes and Grand Dukes." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 43, no. 2/3 (1999): 653-64. ———. "Republicanism in the Visual Propaganda of Cosimo I De' Medici." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 (1992): 200-09. Vanhaelen, Maude. “‘Cose di Platone fatte Toscane’: Language and Ideology in Two Vernacular Translations of Plato Printed by Francesco Priscianese.” The Modern Language Review 107, No. 4 (October 2012): 1082-1100. Varchi, Benedetto. Opere di Benedetto Varchi ora per la prima volta raccolte, con un discorso di A. Racheli intorno ala fililogia del secolo XVI e alla vita e agli scritti dell’autore, aggiuntevi de Lettere di Gio. Battista Busini sopra l’assedio di Firenze. 2 vols. Trieste: Lloyd Austriaco, 1858-9. ———. Storia Fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi. Con i primi quattro libri e col non secondo il codice autografo. Quale fu pubblicata la prima volta. Edited by Gaetano Milanesi. 3 vols. Florence: Le Monnier, 1857-1888. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori. Scritte da Giorgio Vasari pittore aretino… Edited by Gaetano Milanesi. 9 volumes. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1878- 1885.

Verstegen, Ian. "Due Varietà in Se: Practices of Engagement in Bronzino's Portraits." Source: Notes in the History of Art 30, no. 4 (Summer 2011): 26-30. Virgil, Aeneid. Translated by J.W. Mackail. London: MacMillan, 1885. Vianello, Valerio. Il letterato, l'accademia, il libro: contributi sulla cultura veneta del Cinquecento. Padua: Antenore, 1988. Virch, Claus. “A Study by Tintoretto after Michelangelo.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15, no. 4 (Dec., 1956): 111-116, Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture. Translated by William Hicks Morgan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914. Voss, Hermann. Die Malerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz. Berlin: G. Grote, 1920.

260

Waldman, Louis. “‘Miracol Novo Et Raro’: Two Unpublished Contemporary Satires on Bandinelli's 'Hercules'." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 38, no. 2/3 (1994): 419-27. ——— and B. Preyer, “The patronage portrait in late renaissance Florence: an enigmatic portrait of Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai and its commemoration,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 54, no. 1 (2010-2012): 133-154. Walker-Oakes, Vanessa. "Representing the Perfect Prince: Pontormo's Alessandro De' Medici." Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 32 (2001): 127-46. Wallace, William E. "Florence under the Medici Pontificates, 1513-1537." In Florence, edited by Francis Ames-Lewis, 230-329. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ———. Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man, and His Times, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010 Warburg, Aby. Sandro Botticelli’s “Geburt der Venus” und “Frühling”: eine Untersuchung über die Vorstellungen von der Antike in der italienischen Frührenaissance (Hamburg and Leipzig: Voss, 1893) reprinted in The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, translated by David Britt. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999. Wasserman, Jack. "Pontormo in the Capponi Chapel in Santa Felicita in Florence." Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 53, no. 1 (2009): 35-72. Weil-Garris, Kathleen. "On Pedestals: Michelangelo's David, Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus, and the Sculpture of the Piazza Della Signoria." Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 20 (1983): 377-415. Weisz GM, Albury WR, Lippi D, Matucci-Cerinic M. “Who was Pontormo’s Halberdier? The evidence form pathology.” Rheumatol. Int. Doi 10.1007/s00296-011-1898-7 [Published online 30 March 2011]; Wildmoser, Rudolf. "Das Bildnis Des Ugolino Martelli Von Agnolo Bronzino." Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 1, no. 31 (1989): 181-214. Wilkins, David G. “Donatello’s Lost Dovizia for the Mercato Vecchio: Wealth and Charity as Florentine Civic Virtues,” The Art Bulletin 65 (1983): 401-23. Williams, Robert. "Bronzino's Gaze." In The Beholder: The Experience of Art in Early Modern Europe, edited by Thomas Frangenberg and Robert Williams, 87-101. London: Ashgate, 2006. ———. “‘Virtus Perficitur’: On the Meaning of Donatello’s Bronze ‘David.’” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 53, 2/3 (2009): 217-228. Wind, Edgar. Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Wittkower, Rudolf. "Transformations of Minerva in Renaissance Imagery." Journal of the Warburg Institute 2, no. 3 (1939): 194-205.

261

Wolk-Simon, Linda. "Fame, ‘Paragone’, and the Cartoon: The Case of Perino Del Vaga." Master Drawings 30, no. 1 (1992): 61-82. ———. "Francesco Salviati." Apollo 147, no. 439 (September 1998): 53-54. Wood, Christopher. “Maximilian I as Archeologist,” Renaissance Quarterly, 58, no. 4 (Winter 2005), 1128-1174. Woods-Marsden, Joanna. “‘Ritratto al Naturale’: Questions of Realism and Idealism in Early Renaissance Portraits.” Art Journal 46, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987); 209-216. Wright, Alison. "The Memory of Faces: Representational Choices in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Portraiture." In Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, edited by Giovanni Ciapelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, 86-113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———.and Marchand, Eckart, eds. With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. ———. “‘...con uno inbasamento et ornamento alto’: The Rhetoric of the Pedestal c. 1430-1550.” Art History 34, no. 1 (Feb., 2011): 8-53. Yates, Frances A. Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century. London: Routledge, 1975. Yoran, Hanan. "Florentine Civic Humanism and the Emergence of Modern Ideology." History and Theory 46, no. (October 2007) (2007): 326-44. Zagorin, Perez. Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990. Zanrè, Domenico. Cultural Non-Conformity in Early Modern Florence. London: Ashgate, 2004. ———. "Ritual and Parody in Mid-Cinquecento Florence. Cosimo de' Medici and the Accademia del Piano." In The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler, 189-205. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001.

262